Progressive Health Forum adds voice to calls for end to load shedding at hospitals
The
Progressive Health Forum is the latest organisation to put pressure on the
government to remove all hospitals from the load shedding schedule.
It is backing calls by the Health Professions Council of SA, which recently pleaded for an exemption for hospitals and clinics, saying the outages have put an enormous strain on an already stretched public healthcare system.
The forum, which represents doctors, agrees - saying the blackouts follow surges in Covid-19 cases that have negatively affected healthcare.
READ: South Africans set to suffer through another week of power cuts
Convener Dr Aslam Dasoo says health professionals are now forced to go beyond duty to save lives in the dark.
He says while hospital generators kick in at private facilities when loadshedding starts, they're meant to be used for a short period of time.
"Water and power are indispensable to continue operations, so when you lose power, you lose a number of functional capabilities at the hospital. That measures in the number of death and one can't put it more plainly because if it's the patient's being ventilating in the ICU suddenly without power requiring staff who manually ventilate these patients, they can only do it for an hour or two before the patient will unfortunately die."
