Johannesburg - The death of one of the patients who died at a Limpopo hospital in June was caused by a power outage, Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi announced on Tuesday.
He said, however, that the deaths of two other patients who died a few hours and two days later, respectively, could not be linked to the power outage.
Motsoaledi revealed this on Tuesday when he made public the findings of the task team he appointed after three patients died at Letaba Hospital outside Tzaneen in June.
Addressing journalists in Polokwane, Motsoaledi said the patient, whose name was kept confidential at the request of her family, died because of a power outage.
“The power failure is the reason for the patient being tipped early into inevitable death,” he said.
The minister said the female patient died of cardiac arrest while she was being transferred from the intensive care unit to the theatre, where the UPS (uninterrupted power supply) units were still functional.
“But we are confirming that the immediate cause of death was that when the (power) switched off, she could not breathe without a ventilator,” said Motsoaledi.
He explained that the power outage had not been caused by the scheduled rationing of power supply by Eskom, also known as load shedding. “On that day, there was no load shedding. An Eskom circuit breaker (at the hospital) broke down.”
Motsoaledi said the hospital generator had kicked in immediately, but later ran out of diesel as there wasn’t enough of the fuel. The battery-operated UPS units, which continued to supply power in the ICU, where the three patients were being kept, also ran out of power.
The Star