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The Health Professions Council of South Africa has called on Eskom to exempt healthcare facilities from load shedding.
Eskom implemented stage 5 load shedding due to breakdowns, causing blackouts at hospitals and clinics, which the health body says is creating more strain on the already stretched healthcare system.
There are over 400 state-run hospitals and more than 3 000 state-run clinics across the country that depend on Eskom.
The President of the Health Professions Council of South Africa, Professor Simon Nemutandani, says load shedding has compromised the provision of quality health care.
"Healthcare Practitioners in the hospitals are unable to perform emergency surgeries timeously because of load shedding and this has put the lives of the patients at risk. These health facilities are also platforms used for undergraduate internships and postgraduate training of health professionals who are also negatively affected by load shedding.
Professor Nemutandani says more than 80% of South Africans are reliant on public healthcare services and the implementation stages of load shedding and the lack of a robust contingency plan have proved to be catastrophic in the healthcare environment, with varied and far-reaching consequences.
He says power supply interruptions place critically ill patients who are dependent on life-support machines at risk.
"While private facilities and secondary- and tertiary-level public hospitals appear to be well equipped with generator banks. The performance and life span of medical equipment and devices are negatively affected by power interruptions.
"On the other hand, smaller healthcare facilities including primary healthcare clinics which are not equipped with generator banks are often left in the dark," said Nemutandani
