Steve Biko hospital ICU, operating theatres hit by power outages

One week after Steve Biko Academic Hospital was plunged into darkness twice in one day, and answers to the outages remain a mystery.

Pretoria Rekord reports lights going off while surgeries were being performed after mid-morning and late evening power disruptions  on Tuesday last week.

Healthcare workers had to use lights from cellphones to attend to patients during the outages.

The first one lasted several hours, while the evening blackout lasted around one hour.

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The power outages were confirmed to Pretoria Rekord by Gauteng health department spokesperson Kwara Kekana, who said the intensive care unit and operating theatres were also affected.

Some parts of the hospital had power when the blackouts occurred, but other sections had to wait some time before being lit up.

Kekana said however that the outages did not cause any harm to human life, and that all planned surgeries were postponed.

Hospital management has not yet been able to pinpoint the cause of the outage, as the hospital does have generators in case of a power failure.

No further explanation as to why only parts of the hospital were plunged into darkness was offered.

For example, one patient who was on oxygen did not have their supply disturbed during the outage.

But others said they were served cold food due to the blackouts, something Kekana said hospital management was not aware of.

She said despite the outages, the hospital continued to provide “quality care”.

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Edited by Nica Richards.

This article first appeared on Caxton publication Pretoria Rekord, by Sinesipho Schrieber. Read the original article here.