Health
- Whether any deaths in hospitals in the province caused as a direct result of the power load shedding have been brought to her attention; if so, what are the relevant details;
- whether her Department has contingency plans to deal with load shedding; if not, why not; if so, what are the relevant details;
- whether any operations at hospitals in the province could not be performed due to load shedding; if so, what are the relevant details?
1. To date, no deaths have been reported due to load shedding in any hospital.
- The Department has a comprehensive contingency plan for both load shedding and black out. All hospitals in the Western Cape Department of Health are fitted with Emergency Standby Generators. The installation of generators at all hospitals, CHC’s and other 24-hour facilities forms part of the design brief to The Department of Transport & Public Works. All Hospitals built in the past 7 years were fitted with an additional generator (i.e. Paarl, Worcester, Mitchells Plain and Khayelitsha Hospitals) to ensure security of supply.
In addition, central EMS and Disaster Management Centres are fitted with Generators.
The Department has instituted a maintenance and service plan for all generators. This entails:
- Generators are inspected by technical staff at least every fortnight.
- Facility technical staff keep record of these inspections.
- A service level agreement is in place for the service and maintenance of all generators. This entails:
- An annual Major Service and inspection.
- 6-monthly minor service and inspection.
The Department also has a direct communication line with the Eskom Control Centre.
- Across all the hospitals where load shedding has occured, the well-functioning generators have by and large prevented any major service disruptions. There has been some impact on sheduled operations due to load shedding, e.g. at Paarl Hospital elective lists had to be stopped and emergencies continued in those theatres.
In these instances the elective procedure would not go ahead and patients would have to be rescheduled. However, where a patient’s surgery was cancelled on a particular day, they were still operated on within two days. A large number of patients on the theatre lists are actually emergency cases, e.g. amputations, explorative laparotomies, fractures, evacs, etc. which means they are operated on even if the power goes off (and the generators kick in), as they are emergencies. The three tertiary hospitals, namely Tygerberg Hospital, Groote Schuur Hospital and Red Cross War Memorial Children’s Hospital, have been minimally affected by load shedding at all.
