EDITORIAL | Blackouts may debilitate the economy but the impact on health services is critical

If you thought load-shedding was just about electricity supply, think again.

The impact of the devastating blackouts that have plunged SA into darkness for much of the past month reach far beyond the power grid.

The knock-on effects are wide-ranging.

Water supply in Johannesburg has been affected by power trips at purification plants. Cellphone signals and internet connections are also affected, with not enough time between prolonged bouts of load-shedding for base stations to recharge.

Power surges have caused electrical devices to blow, while the life expectancy of sensitive battery-operated systems diminishes with every bout of blackouts.

Santam reported a 60% hike in claims for damage to electronics due to power surges caused by load-shedding in the first half of 2022. It also said load-shedding had caused an increase in traffic accidents.

Every sector of society is affected in multiple ways.

But perhaps the most egregious of all is the impact load-shedding is having on state health facilities.

Only 10 of the 130 state health facilities in Johannesburg are exempt from load-shedding. Not included on this exceptionally short list is at least one major state hospital, Rahima Moosa Mother and Child Hospital in Coronationville. 

The City of Johannesburg says the hospital is among the 120 state health facilities that cannot be exempt because the network configuration would mean the large surrounding area would also have to be exempt, and this would put too much strain on the grid.

The end result is two of the city’s main hospitals brought to their knees by Eskom. There have been horror stories of surgeons operating by the light of their cellphone torches.

Instead, Rahima Moosa — which struggles to cope even on its best day — has to spend huge amounts of money it doesn’t have to keep generators running so that essential services are not interrupted.

Then, in a double whammy courtesy of state capture and deep-rooted mismanagement, the knock-on effect kicks in: The hospital has been without water supply for days because of repetitive power trips at Rand Water’s Zuikerbosch purification plant, which has affected various Rand Water pump stations and reservoirs.

Also affected by the water supply challenges is Helen Joseph Hospital in Auckland Park.

Both Rahima Moosa and Helen Joseph are already under exceptional strain, having to accommodate patients who would ordinarily have gone to Charlotte Maxeke Johannesburg Academic Hospital, which is still not fully operational after a fire in April 2021.

The end result is two of the city’s main hospitals brought to their knees by Eskom.

There have been horror stories of surgeons operating by the light of their cellphone torches.

And while water tankers have been available, it is difficult to understand how such important facilities can operate efficiently without running water.

Uninterrupted access to water and electricity are among the most basic requirements of a functioning hospital.

On a national level, only a tenth of SA’s hospitals have been exempted from load-shedding, according to health minister Joe Phaahla, who admitted last week that “load-shedding is a risk to the efforts to deliver on our constitutional mandate of protecting, promoting and maintaining the health, safety and wellbeing of patients and the public by ensuring quality pharmaceutical service for all South Africans”.

In Limpopo, state health authorities have cancelled non-elective surgeries until load-shedding is suspended.

Meanwhile, SA lurched back into stage 4 on Tuesday, with the grid showing only minimal recovery since the country hit stage 6 two weeks ago.

While much of the focus of the latest round of load-shedding has understandably been on the direct impact on the economy, SA has a constitutionally mandated responsibility to provide basic medical care to those in need.

As always, when issues of service delivery arise, it is the poor and disadvantaged who are most affected. It is these people, who often have no voice, who we must think of first whenever the lights go off and the taps run dry.