As many as 100 scheduled surgeries were postponed at Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Center (JPMC) on Tuesday due to an 18-hour-long power breakdown, causing inconvenience for many visiting and in-house patients.
Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Center Focal Person Dr Jawaid Akhter Jamali said that one of the feeders tripped that caused a massive power breakdown in the hospital.
The administration had used standby generators to provide electricity to the Casualty Department, Intensive Care Units (ICUs) and a few other departments, while the remaining hospital was deprived of electricity. The power failure that began from the evening of May 16 lasted till next day noon.
He said that the patients and their attendants faced difficulty in late hours due to power breakdown, while patient care was also badly affected in OPD hours. The water supply to various departments also remained suspended.
Jamali said that there are a total of nine standby generators in the hospital out of which two are not working, while seven others are old and are not functioning properly.
He said that the hospital administration had called the Karachi-Electric (KE) for restoration of the power supply. However, the KE teams restored the electricity supply of this important hospital after 18 hours.
Sindh Chief Minister Syed Qaim Ali Shah had assured provision of two heavy power generators to the hospital in a meeting with JPMC Executive Director Dr Aneesuddin Bhatti a few days ago, he said. The new generators will help to manage such situations in near future, he added.
JPMC Head of Accident and Emergency Department Dr Seemin Jamali said that the power breakdown partially affected the functioning of emergency department but the technical fault was soon resolved. She said that the routine surgeries were cancelled but the emergency operations were carried out with the help of a standby generator at the Casualty Department.
