The Hospital Association of South Africa (HASA), the representative organisation for most of the country’s private hospital groups, welcomes recent media reported responses from the Minister of Health, Dr Joe Phaahla, to requests to exempt hospitals from load shedding.
According to reports, the Minister recognizes that load shedding is making patient care and hospital operations extremely difficult and has undertaken that his department will assess the situation, and he will this week offer proposals to alleviate the impacts of the energy crisis on medical centres of care.
Load shedding occurs throughout the country, in areas where both private and public hospitals operate. Therefore, both public and private facilities are affected. Consequently, care for vulnerable patients in both sectors is being adversely affected in many ways. Both public and private hospitals suffer many of the same challenges because of load shedding, including:
Multiple institutions in some areas suffer load shedding simultaneously to that access to care for some in those areas is being eroded.
There is large-scale degeneration of equipment.
Operating costs are rising exponentially: generator maintenance, diesel costs, storage, security, all contribute to this.
Most of all, without lights, providing care for the most vulnerable is onerous, and is becoming more so as the lights are off for several hours a day and night, every day during this latest cycle of cuts.
For these reasons, HASA urges the Minister of Health to advocate for relief from load shedding for all acute care hospitals at the very least, but also preferably for day clinics, and community clinics around the country.
