Last Wednesday, the Rahima Moosa Mother and Child Hospital had to transfer six premature babies to nearby hospitals.
The one generator that was provided to the hospital, failed to kick in after a power cut due to the heavy rains experienced in Johannesburg.
The outage had affected services in the theatre.
Patients waiting to have their C-sections done couldn’t go into theatre because of the power supply not being stable enough to operate.
Babies that are born prematurely, some of them weighing less than 1kg, were moved by emergency services ambulances in the early morning of Wednesday.
Jack Bloom, DA spokesperson, said: “Yet again, generators have proved to be defective, despite assurances that back-up power would always be available at hospital.
“The Gauteng Infrastructure Department is to be blamed and must take urgent action to ensure hospitals have reliable power at all times”
“Rahima Moosa Hospital experienced an interruption in power supply from the Municipality at approximately 6:20am on March 5. The power interruption affected the entire hospital.
“The hospital has two generators, one of which kicked in instantly and the other a short while later – the maintenance team was stationed on site. During the course of the power interruption both generators were running and the entire hospital had a power supply,” said Ramona Baijnath media liaison for the Department of Infrastructure Development.
