Far East Rand Hospital and nearby areas have been experiencing power supply failure since Saturday, 02 July around 11 am to date.
The facility’s generators immediately kicked in following the incident and have been supplying the facility with emergency power since then.
The power failure is due to a fault in the local power station that Eskom and the municipality teams are currently working on.
The power failure also affected critical areas (Casualty and ICU). The hospital is divided into two sections running on two different generators with varying capacities. One of the generators supplying the critical areas ran out of diesel on Sunday (03 July) morning around 09:00.
Delivery of diesel happened in the morning and at 11:30 the generator was back online.
Far East Rand Hospital has been working with nearby facilities to minimise the impact on patient care.
It must be pointed out that the hospital is exempted from load shedding due to an arrangement with the municipality. The power failure is due to a fault in the local power station which the relevant utilities are responding to.
The backup system at the facility is not meant to run indefinitely but it is a temporary stopgap measure while the normal power supply is restored.
The fact that there were minimal interruptions to services at the hospital talks to the fact that the facility has sufficient emergency capacity. However, this is not a sustainable situation. It is therefore important that the power supply is restored as a matter of urgency.
Issued by Gauteng Department of Health
