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Provincial Hospital in Gqeberha says it has resumed theatre operations after a private contractor accidentally severed an electrical cable two weeks ago.
Patients were at the mercy of one generator to supply electricity to the entire facility for the past fortnight.
Hospital CEO, Dr Mthandeki Xamlashe, told Algoa FM News that the private contractor was fixing an underground water pipe when an electric cable was damaged.
The hospital was plunged into darkness for a day before the generator kicked-in.
According to a source patients needing scans, X-rays or blood work were also sent home due to the outage.
Xamlashe says after the cable was fixed, the hospital needed to go through safety inspections before being declared operational again.
"They were both fixed but we need to make sure that the voltage is correct and will not damage the equipment. So, there is a lot of work that is (being) done even after the infrastructure was fixed to get it certified safe for operations. That was completed yesterday (Weds)," he said.
Dr Xamlashe said the backlog in operations was there because of Covid19. Any day you delay us, it makes the situation worse," he added.
