On Tuesday evening, the hospital's Chief Executive Officer Dr Iqbal Khandwalla said power had been disconnected early in the morning, despite them paying Sh20 million to Kenya Power.
The 700-bed-capacity Level 5 hospital, which is the biggest in the Coast region with eight theatres, several Intensive Care Units, High Dependency Unit and Maternal High Dependency Unit, was running on power from a 450-KVA diesel generator for 12 hours after electricity was cut off.
After an uproar from Mombasa MCAs, rights organisation, patients and the management of CGTRH, the power was finally restored Tuesday night.
Dr Khandwalla on Wednesday morning informed the Star that, “Power was restored last evening and all is well as no life was lost. We were running on a power back-up generator during the stalemate.”
He said they usually pay Kenya Power bills quarterly and they had last month paid Sh18 million to the power company and an additional Sh2 million had been paid on Tuesday morning.
“We have paid Sh20 million to Kenya power, that already shows our willingness to resolve all the pending issues,” Khandwalla said.
On Tuesday evening, Khandwalla informed the Mombasa leadership and the public that the power was cut off while they had scheduled 64 surgeries to be done at the theatre.
“The power was cut while the theatre cases were going on. We actually had patients on the theatre tables because you all know that Coast General is a very busy hospital and, in the morning, we were supposed to do 42 to 64 cases,” Khandwalla said.
He added, “In the middle of surgeries, power went off that triggered the oxygen generator to also go off immediately for a couple of minutes while the cases of surgeries were still going on. It is not right thing to cut off power from such a big facility.”
He said they had 60 babies in the new born unit that all required oxygen, another 30 patients in the ICU, several patients at the HDU and the Maternal HDU wards.
“We are a referral facility, even now as we stand here, we are still receiving patients from other counties. How are we going to serve if the generator also goes off? There is going to be a catastrophe over here if that happens,” said the hospital boss.
Bernard Ogutu, the Mombasa County Assembly Health Committee chairperson, said they were saddened by Kenya Power disconnecting power to CGTRH without notice.
“If they (Kenya Power) have a very big issue with the county, they should have disconnected power at either the County Assembly building or the Governor’s office,” Ogutu said.
He demanded that power be restored as soon as possible to avert any incidents of life being lost at the CGTH.
Mjambere MCA Amriya Juma said Kenya Power must restore electricity to Coast General immediately and threatened to sue the agency if any life is lost.
“We will file charges against them if any life is lost in the course of this blackout, someone must be held accountable,” Juma said.
She added that the counties have not received the equitable revenue from the National Treasury since November last year.
“We will definitely pay the entire debt if we receive the monies. We have all intentions to clear all the pending bills,” she said.
-Edited by SKanyara
