Power outage at KK hospital disrupts surgery, leaves medics in darkness

 

A power outage occurred at Queen Elizabeth Hospital (HQE) in Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, today, forcing at least one surgery to be stopped midway pending transfer to another hospital where the surgery could continue.

According to a notice sent to hospital staff, the hospital’s transformer suffered a failure at 12.05pm today, and repair work could last until 2pm tomorrow.

“Measures to conduct repairs failed when alternatives supplies… failed to provide power,” read the notice, which was seen by Malaysiakini.

A source - who is a healthcare worker who can’t be named as they are not authorised to speak to the media - said the outage occurred when two patients were already lined up for surgery.

“One of them was halfway through an elective surgery and had to stop and send to Queen Elizabeth II Hospital (HQE2) to complete it. Another one is very ill and needed surgery urgently.

“Both of them were brought down by stairs and both also require ICU after surgery,” the source told Malaysiakini.

According to The Star, health workers were seen moving about the hospital and treating patients in the dark using flashlights and handphone lights.

The source, meanwhile, claimed that some health workers even resorted to manually ventilating their intubated patients using bag valve masks so they could continue breathing.

While ICUs are equipped with uninterruptable power supplies that could keep mechanical ventilators and other life support equipment running, the source said these have a limited lifespan because they run on batteries.

The Star reported that power was restored to some parts of the hospital at around 4.40pm.

Rose: Operations continue as usual

According to the notice to hospital staff, a contingency plan has been put into effect to cancel or reschedule elective surgeries.

Emergency cases will be transferred to HQE2 or the Sabah Women and Children’s Hospital, the notice read.

The plan also calls for HQE to borrow generators from Sabah Electricity Sdn Bhd (SESB).

The Star quoted Sabah Health Department director Dr Rose Nani Mudin saying SESB has supplied three backup generators to supplement the hospital’s own generators.

The source, however, claimed the hospital needed eight such generators while the hospital’s main generator has failed.

Nevertheless, Rose assured there is nothing to worry about regarding the hospital’s operations because the outage is being handled professionally.

“Our operations continue as usual, our powers are up as we have the generator sets,” she said.

“We are alternating the use of the generator sets so that they can last until the problem is rectified,” she added, according to the report.

In contrast to the notice, she was quoted saying non-critical cases are being referred to HQE2 while HQE handles emergencies and critical cases, such as ICU patients, intubated patients, and surgeries that require immediate attention. - Mkini