The Democratic Alliance (DA) in Limpopo called on Limpopo Health MEC Phophi Ramathuba to urgently speed up the process to exclude more hospitals in the province from power outages.

On Friday, Health Minister Dr Joe Phaahla announced that only four hospitals in the province were exempted from power outages.

DA Limpopo spokesperson for health by Risham Maharaj said this was simply not enough.

“Only exempting tertiary and district hospitals in Limpopo will present a risk to patients because of the province’s longstanding challenges. Transporting patients to other hospitals with electricity is a challenge due to insufficient ambulances and the poor state of roads in Limpopo” he explained.

He highlighted that the Limpopo Department of Health (LDoH) needs to ensure that as many hospitals as possible, if not all, must be exempted from power outages, adding that in cases where it is not possible the department must ensure there are functional generators.

Maharaj claimed that the LDoH already has over 1 575 cases and R14-billion in medical legal cases and cannot afford to have hospitals that carry out services without electricity or power back up during outage, as well as risk lives while transporting critically ill patients to other hospitals.

The DA recently carried out an oversight inspection at Philadelphia Hospital after receiving complaints from hospital staff that the generator had not been working for a week.

“It was completely dark in the hospital during load-shedding and it had badly affected the operating theatre, ICU, casualty and neonatal unit. Staff indicated that they had resorted to using their own lights,” Maharaj explained.