‘No deaths linked to load shedding in hospitals’

THE Gauteng Health Department is adamant that there have been no casualties in their health facilities due to load shedding.

This is despite contrary claims by the Health and Allied Workers Indaba Trade Union, which claims that load shedding is adding to mortality rates in the country.

In the statement, the labour union said it was raising the alarm on the rapid deterioration of health standards, caused by persistent load shedding and water shortages in all public health facilities.

It said it was shameful that the government was so complacent about ending load shedding, an issue which was resulting in scores of unnecessary deaths in state hospitals.

General secretary Lerato Mthunzi said every day they were getting reports from nurses regarding shocking conditions that they were forced to endure because of water and power shortages.

“Nurses and doctors are forced to make terrible choices over who lives and dies, simply because if the power cuts, and the ventilators cut out, there is simply not enough staff to resuscitate all the patients who depend on life saving equipment.

“Can you imagine the impact of load shedding in a neonatal ward where babies are depending on ventilators to keep them alive?

“What is happening in our hospitals on a daily basis is devastating and the state is doing nothing to fix this crisis! Healthcare workers are so depressed, and so despondent because there is no sense of urgency from the state to take us out of this disaster.

“The ANC government has done nothing because as long as the people who are dying are black and poor, they don’t care.

“If load shedding was affecting private healthcare facilities, the way it is affecting public hospitals, a solution would have been found by now,” she said.

Mthunzi said they had noted with keen interest how “this selfish government” had responded to business by promising to compensate them for their financial losses caused by load shedding, accusing the government of always prioritising business over black lives.

“We demand that the state must compensate the families of the working class for the deaths of their loved ones who died needlessly because of power cuts.

“To this end we are calling on the Department of Health to record daily reports on the number of patients who die every day as a result of load shedding, and to make those reports available to the public.

“They used to do this during the Covid-19 pandemic where we received daily updates on the rate of infections and deaths caused by the virus. This week we have once again been subjected to shocking levels of load shedding, because they implemented stage 6 load shedding,” Mthunzi said.

She said the union had demanded that all hospitals and public health care facilities must be exempted from load shedding. Currently, only 77 hospitals were exempt from load shedding, out of 400 hospitals and clinics in the entire country.

“It is a disgrace that the government has allowed Eskom to collapse to this point, forcing healthcare workers to operate under such strenuous conditions.

Reacting to the allegations, Gauteng Health spokesperson Motalatale Modiba said the facilities rendered essential services and should ideally be excluded from service interruptions. He said currently the health system still bore the brunt of power and water outages.

Modiba said there were contingency measures put in place to minimise the impact while long-term solutions are being sought, working with relevant authorities responsible for the provision of water and electricity.

“We have not received any report from facilities that seeks to attribute mortality rates to load shedding,” he said.