Hospitals exempted from power cuts

As South Africa braces for another month of rolling blackouts, followed by four months of electricity rationing, the country's power utility, Eskom, has assured hospitals that they will stay plugged into the national power grid.

Eskom has been unable to keep up with demand and hopes its emergency measures will drop national demand by 10 percent. "We are calling for a 10 percent reduction by all sectors. That is urgent. Because, if we are not delivering on that, then we are not likely to achieve the 4,000MW that we need to [stabilise] the system," The Star newspaper quoted Minister of Minerals and Energy Buyelwa Sonjica as saying on Wednesday.

Fears that the blackouts would cripple essential health care services have been unfounded. "The problem is inconvenient but certainly not insurmountable," Sagie Pillay, chief executive of the Johannesburg General Hospital, told IRIN.

"We have backup power at all public hospitals that provide adequate power for all critical units," but on Monday "Eskom and [Johannesburg] City Power agreed to exclude the most critical hospitals from load shedding."

Pillay said rural areas in South Africa were probably not as badly affected as urban areas, and he did not expect the crisis to negatively affect future investments in public health care. "What is important to note is that no patient is at risk."

What is important to note is that no patient is at risk

Mark Stokoe, spokesperson for one of Africa's largest private ambulance services, Netcare 911, said, "We are managing everything we need to do - the problems we have had were primarily with traffic lights being out. We have been affected and irritated, but we are able to operate almost as normal."

The entire country has been hit by widespread planned load shedding and unplanned outages. Most other sectors, particularly mining, have been less fortunate.

Production in most South African mines - which include some of the world's biggest producers of gold and platinum and are the backbone of the country's economy - has been brought to a halt by the recurrent power outages.

Critics blame a variety of problems, including lack of maintenance, substandard coal, and poor capacity planning that could have averted the current crisis by investment in power stations years ago.

Eskom blamed the recent peak in outages on heavy rain in the coal-producing parts of the country, which affected the quality of coal delivered to its coal-fired plants, and breakdowns in several of its key electricity generating plants.

According to Richard Friedland, CEO of Netcare, one of the country's largest private hospital groups, his organisation had invested up to R120 million (about US$17 million) in generators and power equipment. "We started upgrading facilities three to four years ago in anticipation of power shortages," he told IRIN.

tdm/he