Question NW41 to the Minister of Health
23 February 2024 - NW41
Tetyana, Mr Y to ask the Minister of Health
What (a) number of health facilities have faulty and/or unreliable back-up generators and (b) urgent steps of intervention have been taken to address the issue of dysfunctional back-up generators in each health facility in each case?
Reply:
(a) All hospitals have backup power in a form of generators to provide back-up electricity during outages. Some hospitals also have uninterrupted power supply (“UPS”) units inbuilt as part of their power supply backup. However, the generators and UPS units are not designed to run for longer periods of time than usually anticipated, as has been experienced in the recent frequent and longer instances of loadshedding.
(b) There are maintenance plans in place for all generators to ensure that they are operational and that there are diesel suppliers on standby to ensure that the generators are fully functional at all times.
END.