Power outages affect surgery at Parirenyatwa hospital
By Tichaona Sibanda
22 December 2011
A four day power cut has seriously affected operations at Parirenyatwa
hospital in the capital.
Disruption in the supply of power has also forced authorities at the
hospital to send patients home, while in serious cases patients were
transferred to private hospitals for urgent operations.
Our correspondent Simon Muchemwa said the outages at Parirenyatwa have
forced the city of Harare to approach the utility power company ZESA, with a
plan to resuscitate the thermal power station which stopped working 15 years
ago.
Muchemwa said repeated calls to ZESA to continue power supply to sensitive
institutions like hospitals in Harare have fallen on deaf ears. Although
both Parirenyatwa and Harare hospitals have contingency back-up generators
that are supposed to kick in when there are power outages, most of the times
the generators are out of service.
‘Its either they don’t have fuel or there is a mechanical fault with the
generators, so it has really been a struggle at Parirenyatwa, the most
affected hospital in the city,’ Muchemwa said.
City fathers have had meetings with ZESA officials in a bid to have the
thermal station back in the hands of the council, as it used to be before
the utility company took over in the early 1990’s.
‘Officials in the city council believe that if they can restore the thermal
station, which uses coal, power from that station will be prioritised to
institutions like hospitals around the capital,’ Muchemwa added.
Dr Douglas Gwatidzo of Doctors for Human Rights told the media in Harare on
Wednesday that the country’s chronic power woes must be addressed to prevent
needless loss of life.