THANDI SKADE
An overburdened electricity supply to Chris Hani-Baragwanath Academic Hospital is to blame for the power disturbances there.
Over the past week, the country’s biggest hospital has suffered two power outages, resulting in numerous elective operations being cancelled.
City Power, supplier of electricity to the hospital, yesterday confirmed the outages were caused by overloading.
City Power spokesman Sol Masolo explained that the high electricity demand at the hospital had exceeded the available supply despite the hospital being connected to its own substation.
Electricity usage at the hospital has increased with the addition of the new administration building, but according to DA MPL Jack Bloom, there had been inadequate planning.
“We are seeing the results of poor planning and mismanagement, as it seems that adequate power provision was not made for the new building at the hospital.
“Poor maintenance is also a major part of the problem.”
Thomas (not his real name) has been living in pain for months. He walks with the aid of a walker and can’t stand up without assistance.
Following a knee replacement operation earlier this year, Thomas’s knee had gone septic.
The electricity supply cut out on Tuesday while he was consulting a doctor, who had to use the light from his cellphone to continue his examination of the knee before the generator kicked in.
Thomas was scheduled to undergo an operation on Wednesday to drain the fluid from his knee, but it was cancelled.
His daughter said: “We were told that there was a steam and oxygen supply problem, and because he needed to go under anaesthetic, they had to cancel the operation because it was too risky to go ahead without electricity.”
She had been told by a nurse that Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi had ordered that elective surgeries be stopped “indefinitely”, with only emergency operations performed, until the problem was fixed.
Motsoaledi’s spokesman, Fidel Hadebe, could not be reached for comment.
The power disruptions have created a ripple effect in delaying the handling of other services, such as access to blood test results. These cannot be done when the computers are offline.
The hospital also faces a linen shortage as the laundry has been hit.
Bloom said the gas supply to operating theatres had also been affected, “with alarms going off as gas pipeline pressures go down”.
Power was restored to the hospital late yesterday.
Talk Radio 702 reported that at least 105 operations were cancelled last week.
Speaking on air yesterday, hospital chief executive Johanna More acknowledged that there was a problem and explained that the operations were cancelled because they would have been too risky.
More, who was locked in meetings all day, had not responded by the time of going to press to questions sent to her.
Meanwhile, National Education Health and Allied Workers Union members were expected to march to the hospital today to hand over a memorandum of demands regarding allegations that hospital management had “continually failed to comply with human resource policies when filling posts”.
Nehawu spokesman Sizwe Pamla said auxiliary nurses were being forced to work in the kitchen, in contravention of the requirements of the SA Nursing Council.