Power outage hits new SFGH wing

RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­[email protected]

Crews from the Trinidad and To­ba­go Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion (T&TEC) work along­side tech­ni­cal staff at the South West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (SWRHA) to­day to re­store elec­tric­i­ty to sec­tions of the new wing of the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal near the Ac­ci­dent and Emer­gency De­part­ment af­ter an elec­tri­cal break­er fails, plung­ing parts of the fa­cil­i­ty in­to dark­ness.

Hos­pi­tal sources de­scribe the sit­u­a­tion as “a black Sun­day in the Ac­ci­dent and Emer­gency De­part­ment,” claim­ing non-clin­i­cal ar­eas are left with­out pow­er and al­leg­ing that gen­er­a­tors are not func­tion­ing. The source al­so al­leges el­e­va­tors are down and that pa­tients des­tined for wards have to be trans­port­ed via South West am­bu­lances, with some ser­vices car­ried out man­u­al­ly.

When Guardian Me­dia vis­its the scene, am­bu­lances are parked at the bay. The main doors to the new wing are open and there are no pa­tients vis­i­ble. An em­ploy­ee, who re­quests anonymi­ty, says some peo­ple use flash­lights in­side the swel­ter­ing build­ing as teams work to re­store pow­er. The main doors re­main open dur­ing the re­pairs.

The em­ploy­ee al­so rais­es ques­tions about the main­te­nance of back­up gen­er­a­tors.

How­ev­er, con­tact­ed for com­ment, SWRHA chair­man Anil Go­sine strong­ly de­nies claims that the hos­pi­tal’s gen­er­a­tors fail or that pa­tient care is dis­rupt­ed.

He says the out­age is caused by a break­er is­sue in the new wing that hous­es the Ac­ci­dent and Emer­gency De­part­ment and de­scribes it as brief.

“The ICU nev­er went down — on­ly the bed bu­reau, and this is main­ly ad­min­is­tra­tive,” Go­sine says, in­sist­ing that clin­i­cal ser­vices con­tin­ue un­in­ter­rupt­ed and that no pa­tients have to be trans­port­ed out be­cause of the pow­er is­sue.

Health Min­is­ter Lack­ram Bo­doe al­so seeks to re­as­sure the pub­lic.

“The mat­ter is be­ing dealt with by the Chair­man and CEO of the SWRHA with the in­put and as­sis­tance of T&TEC,” Bo­doe says. “I’m as­sured that pa­tient ser­vices are not sig­nif­i­cant­ly im­pact­ed at this time.

“The new Board has been man­dat­ed to fix the sev­er­al out­stand­ing main­te­nance is­sues at var­i­ous SWRHA fa­cil­i­ties, which they met when they took of­fice,” Dr Bo­doe adds. He says teams are work­ing to re­place the de­fec­tive break­er.