Cutting power in hospitals is like playing a game of Russian roulette with patient's lives and that is why City Power has come to the party and promised to exclude some hospitals from loadshedding, but is it enough? The  Power utility was approached by the Department of Health to consider ways to exempt their facilities from loadshedding because of the critical nature of the service they render to the residents.

A LIST OF 130 FACILITIES RECEIVED

City Power spokesman Isaac Mangena explained that from the list they received there are over 130 health facilities including clinics and hospitals within the City of Joburg.
"On that list, and based on the assessments of our network, we are only able to exempt about 10 facilities, for now, in our supply network. The reason is because of  our network configurations and the fact that most of these facilities are embedded within the network blocks, and we have limited resources that could be used to operate, often physically, during load shedding," said Mangena.

EXEMPTED HOSPITALS

He said while we they are  committed  to ensuring there is minimal to no disruptions to the essential services such as clinics and hospitals, it is difficult to exclude all of them from loadshedding. "Those we managed to exempt include Parkhurst Municipal Clinic, Johannesburg Eye Hospital,  Coronation Hospital, and Helen Joseph Hospital. We are going through the network layout to see if we can be able to exempt more of the health facilities," he said.

PATIENTS' LIVES AT RISK

The Health Professions Council of South Africa Spokesman Christopher Tsatsawane said due to loadshedding and power outages, hospitals in the country were buckling under pressure. He said there were about 420 state-run hospitals and more than 3 000 state-run clinics across the country. He said healthcare practitioners in hospitals were unable to perform emergency surgeries and patient's lives are at risk. “These health facilities are also platforms used for the undergraduates’ internships and postgraduate training of health professionals, who are also negatively affected by load shedding." He said power outages placed critically ill patients who were dependent on life-support machines at risk. Tsatsawane said the performance and life span of medical equipment and devices were also negatively affected by power interruptions.