Independent pharmacies, public hospitals and the state’s key laboratories are scrambling to provide services as SA’s crippling power cuts leave users without electricity for up to 12 hours a day.
Their experience stands in stark contrast to private hospital groups, whose long-standing investments in power generating capacity mean they are among the few health-care providers buffered against the electricity crisis.
Eskom has imposed rolling blackouts every day so far this year, as it is unable to provide reliable electricity supply from its ageing coal-powered plants. The power cuts have intensified in the past six months, and Eskom has increased the frequency with which it imposes stage 6 load-shedding, in which it sheds 6,000MW from the national grid.
Stage 6 load-shedding has been catastrophic for independently owned pharmacies, which do not have the infrastructure to cope with long power outages, said Independent Community Pharmacy Association CEO Jackie Maiman. The association has 1,200 independently owned members and does not include retail chains Clicks and Dis-Chem.
“It’s an absolute disaster,” said Maiman. The power cuts disrupt air-conditioning and compromise the stability of medicines on the shelves, risking the safety of products that require refrigeration, and interrupt electronic claims processing and access to patient records, she said.
Private hospital groups Netcare, Mediclinic and Life Healthcare appear to be among the few health-care industry players able to sustain services with little disruption to patients.
Netcare hospital division MD Jacques du Plessis said the company invested in backup diesel generators and solar power 10 years ago, and while its diesel consumption has doubled from previous years, its operations continue as usual.
Life Healthcare’s SA CEO Adam Pyle said power outages have pushed up the running and maintenance costs of its back-up diesel generators and some hospital equipment, but patient care is not affected.
Mediclinic said the power outages disrupt surgeries at its day clinics but it is generally able to transfer these patients to hospital facilities on the same sites. All its SA hospitals have the necessary equipment to contend with load-shedding, it said.
Mediclinic spends about R1m a day on diesel during stage 6 load-shedding to ensure sustained power for its SA hospitals, the group said.
The largely uninterrupted services provided by the large hospital groups stand in sharp contrast to the situation at many public hospitals.
Only 18 of the 37 public hospitals in Gauteng are exempt from load-shedding, and the rest are unable to fully maintain services during power cuts.
“Load-shedding does in many instances negatively impact on services at facilities. Some procedures have to be postponed, especially elective procedures so that priority is [given to] critical operations which cannot be delayed,” said Gauteng health spokesperson Motalatale Modiba.
Patient records remain accessible during power outages, because the provincial health department uses both paper and electronic patient records, he said.
Earlier this week, the National Health Laboratory Service (NHLS), which provides all the diagnostic tests done in the public sector, warned users in Gauteng that the power cuts pose a risk to the integrity of the samples it receives and are delaying turnaround times.
The laboratory service’s CEO, Kamy Chetty, said the organisation had appealed to the department of health to exempt it from load-shedding, as many of its laboratories rely on hospital back-up generators.
“Load-shedding affects the turnaround times of tests, especially where there is complete power failure as the test has to be reconducted.
“This also impacts on the machinery as power surges are not good for our equipment. The Eastern Cape, which would normally have been able to maintain a turnaround time of 93% of samples, has dropped to approximately 86%,” she said.
Unions have warned that the power cuts are putting patients’ lives at risk and creating a difficult working environment.
“Load-shedding has affected the running of hospitals and made the situation not easy for our members to carry out their responsibilities,” said the National Education, Health and Allied Workers Union.
SA’s biggest nursing union, the Democratic Nursing Organisation of SA, said members reported patients being turned away from health-care facilities during load-shedding.
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