Services at Chris Hani Hospital were not affected by generator failure – Gauteng health dept

Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital in Soweto has had a power failure since the early hours of Wednesday morning, the Gauteng department of health told News24 on Thursday.

This comes after DA health spokesperson in Gauteng, Jack Bloom, said on Wednesday that the hospital experienced generator failure and was unable to supply power to certain operating theatres.

The power failure occurred at about 3.30am on Wednesday, “due to a fault on the municipality’s side”, said department spokesperson Kwara Kekana.

Kekana said generators were used a back-up source of power, but that the ICU and maternity generators stopped working at around 9am and had to be restarted.

“Theatre services in maternity were delayed for about two hours as a result of the failure of the automatic starting of the generator.

“Services in ICU were not negatively affected because the life support equipment has a battery backup that can last for three hours,” Kekana said.

As a result, all elective procedures were cancelled and emergency procedures prioritised in the main theatre complex.

“This is the principle whenever we are on generator power.

“The generator supplying ICU failed again during the afternoon and we had to link ICU to the generator supplying the main theatre as it has capacity to take both loads,” Kekana said.

A contractor has since been appointed to fix the issue.

The Gauteng department of health assured the public that diesel levels were checked daily to ensure that all tanks had enough diesel.

The department previously told News24 the hospital was operating with about 17 generators.

“The biggest one can run for 10 days straight, uninterrupted, if it is full to capacity fuel-wise,” Kekana added on Wednesday.

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