Princess Marina generators ok-hospital

MARANYANE NGWANAAMOTHO
Staff Writer | Friday March 15, 2013 00:00

Motsumi said the generators provide backup during power outages to five different parts of the hospital and are checked and monitored on a weekly basis. She said the generators sometimes experience minor problems, but only for short periods of time. Recently, she said, the hospital experienced a power failure from 1430hrs until 2000hrs. Between 1430hrs and 1700hrs all the generators in the hospital were functioning. It was only after 1700hrs and 2000hrs that the hospital experienced power failures that lasted an average of five minutes each.

During that time, one of the generators that services the accident and emergency, minor theatre, medical records, specialist clinics, pharmacy, laboratory, X-ray, neo natal unit, gynea theatre, administration block, domestic services and main supplies failed to provide backup power to these parts of the hospital. Explaining the failure, Motsumi says that investigations showed that the fuel transfer pump that pumps fuel from the underground tank to the surface tank failed, leading to the failure of the generator. The maintenance team resorted to pumping the fuel manually from the underground tank to the tank that fed into the generator.

There had been public concern for the lives that were at risk because of the power interruptions. Motsumi assured that no lives were lost during the power interruptions. With the recent power load shedding schedules, some people dread going to the hospital for fear of losing their lives should there be a power outage while they are, for example, undergoing a critical surgical operation for. A couple of times, the hospital has had power outages that left the facility dark for hours as generators failed to pick up. The incidences go back as far as April last year, when the hospital had one of the longest dark periods, which lasted for about four hours.