Central SA
Central SA health facilities equipped for load-shedding─── 13:37 Tue, 27 Sep 2022
The Health Departments in the Free State, North West and Northern Cape provinces say they have backup plans to ensure that if load-shedding continues, members of the public will not be disadvantaged from accessing essential healthcare services.
In his response to an enquiry regarding the level of readiness, the Free State Health Department spokesperson, Mondli Mvambi, explained that load-shedding is an unplanned emergency that is plaguing the entire country, including different parts of the world in what is characterised as a global energy crisis.
“We are nevertheless coping with it albeit under difficult circumstances. Many of our District Hospitals, Regional Hospitals and Community Health Centers (CHCs) have generators, including the Pelonomi and Universitas Hospitals. These hospitals have responded well so far to the challenges of load-shedding and we have not experienced any adverse events related to load-shedding.”
Meanwhile, the Northern Cape Health Department's Head of Communications, Lulu Mxekezo, says that health facilities have standby generators.
“The department has a contract in place with a service provider that is maintaining the standby generators. There is additional procurement of generators to increase the backup capability. We have allocated more funding for the maintenance of these generators as it was not originally envisaged that load-shedding will be for extended periods of time.
“We are negotiating with different municipalities and Eskom to minimise or adjust to less busy time slots of load-shedding at the areas where health facilities are situated.”
The North West Health Department spokesperson, Tebogo Lekgethwane, adds that they are also ready, stating that all health facilities have backup generators.
“Up to so far, we have not received any complaints from health facilities.”
OFM News previously reported that the Bloemfontein Community Clinic, the MUCPP, was allegedly operating with candlelight on 11 July 2022, during load-shedding.
The chairperson of the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC), Bongani Majola, explained to OFM News that they went on an oversight visit to the clinic on that day, and they were told there is a generator. The generator in question, however, had technical issues so it was a problem for it to kick in during load-shedding.
