Charlotte Maxeke Hospital professor’s petition heard to keep power on in hospitals
Charlotte Maxeke Hospital is among City Power’s 10 supply network facilities exempt from load-shedding.
Among the 37 hospitals announced to be exempt from loadshedding is Charlotte Maxeke Hospital in Parktown.
The announcement was made by health minister Dr Joe Phaahla at a media briefing on September 30. Minister Phaahla announced that 37 hospitals across the country would be exempted from load-shedding following several engagements with various stakeholders including Eskom and municipalities.
On September 16, head of Internal Medicine at Charlotte Maxeke Hospital, Professor Adam Mohamed, started a petition to the Gauteng Provincial Government and relevant departments calling on them to exempt all hospitals in Gauteng from load-shedding.
“Load-shedding puts a strain on both hospital equipment (which is already aged and undersupplied) and patients’ lives. Emergency surgeries cannot be performed timeously because of it. As it is, after Covid-19, the number of admissions and severity of disease have increased exponentially putting a further strain on an already stretched healthcare system,” said Mohamed.
He said uninterrupted power supply batteries in neonatal care wards and other intensive care units do not have enough time to recharge between power cuts during load-shedding, which is fatal for infants and the most vulnerable of patients. “Even where hospitals do have generators, they cannot power the entire hospital so outpatients for example, who sit in an area that is not considered an emergency area, will sit in total darkness requiring healthcare professionals to use their cellphone torches in order to examine them.”
He said during load-shedding, a hospital like Charlotte Maxeke burns through between 800 and 900 litres of diesel a day. This translates into an expenditure of between R5m and R8m a month – which all comes out of the provincial health budget.
The professor said the supply of water is also affected during load-shedding, which has a direct impact on hygiene and increases the spread of infections. City Power spokesperson Isaac Mangena said, they were committed to assisting to relieve some pressure from the facilities and as such excluded 10 out of the 137 facilities in City Power’s supply network.
“About two weeks ago City Power started excluding Charlotte Maxeke Academic Hospital as well from load-shedding due to the challenges faced by the facility such as compromised electricity supply points. Only a few health facilities can be exempted, the rest cannot because of the network configurations and the limited resources that could be used to operate during load-shedding.
According to regulatory standards, hospitals, clinics, water reservoirs and pumps are not exempted from load-shedding and the expectation is that they need to make plans to ensure they have alternatives during load-shedding which may include generators,” said Mangena.
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