South Africa’s Minister of Health, Joe Phaahla, said that Groote Schuur, Tygerberg, Red Cross and George Regional hospitals are among the 76 health facilities in the country that have been exempt from loadshedding since September 2022.
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According to IOL, he was answering questions from Freedom Front MP Philip van Staden, who asked if all government hospitals and clinics in each province were exempt from loadshedding during the current Eskom crisis.
Van Staden also requested the names of hospitals and clinics in each province that were still not exempt from loadshedding, as well as the steps being taken to ensure that all state and provincial hospitals and clinics were exempt from loadshedding.
According to Phaahla, not all government facilities have been exempted from power outages, and the national Department of Health has provided Eskom with a total of 213 hospitals to be considered for possible loadshedding exemption.
He claimed that municipalities supply approximately 67% of these hospitals, while Eskom supplies approximately 33% of the identified hospitals. Out of the 213 hospitals, 76 have been exempted, with 26 supplied directly by Eskom and 50 by municipalities.
He also stated that the number of hospitals exempted has more than doubled since the meeting between Eskom and the national Department of Health on September 22, 2022.
Fifteen hospitals are exempt in KwaZulu-Natal, fourteen in the Free State and fourteen in Gauteng. There are seven exempt hospitals in the Eastern Cape, five in the Northern Cape, and four in Mpumalanga.
Phaahla said clinics and community health centres were going to be covered within the solar energy roll-out programme.
He reportedly stated that the National Department of Health is currently conducting a due diligence exercise for the installation of solar panels at all of our health facilities in collaboration with the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR).
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