Deputy Health Minister, Sibongiseni Dhlomo, says generators at state health facilities are insufficient for hospitals to cope during rolling blackouts (load shedding).
He was briefing the National Council of Provinces on the impact of load shedding on the provision of health care services.
Dhlomo says while health facilities always had generators, it was meant for short lived power failures and not for outages of up to four hours.
“Generators were meant for critical areas like ICU and theatre so don’t lose minute because of fault in hospitals. Our backup (was) not meant to support hospitals for four hours, generators were meant for specific intervention so we do not lose life.”
Meanwhile, Dhlomo says he can’t say whether power cuts at health facilities has been the direct cause of some deaths.
Asked by an MP whether a patient has died because power cuts meant no services could be rendered, Dhlomo only confirmed that power cuts do compromise health care.
“Now I don’t know how to answer. We don’t have deaths classified as death because of load shedding. All we are saying is that absence of electricity is compromising quality of health care.”
Panel discussion – Challenges faced by the health sector during load shedding:
