New Delhi, July 31 (IANS) Hospitals in the national capital, including AIIMS and Safdarjung were unaffected due to the major power breakdown Tuesday in the northern and eastern regions as they continued to manage on power back-up systems.
While the power grid snapped at 1 p.m., hospitals such as All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) and Safdarjung Hospital had wrapped up their out-patient services by that time.
“No services were affected due to power failure today (Tuesday). We have gen-set power back-up for emergency services, out-patient departments (OPD) and other specialty departments also,” said D.K. Sharma, medical superintendent at AIIMS.
“There is always a minimum of 8-hour back up to support power in the hospital,” Sharma added.
This is the second power crisis in the last 24 hours affecting as many as 19 states not just in the north but also in the east and northeast. The power outage has brought to halt essential services such as rail and metro operations, besides causing massive traffic snarls.
Other Delhi hospitals such as G.B. Pant, Lok Nayak Hospital and Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital are also running on power back-up to keep on track emergency services.
Ashok Khurana, medical superintendent of G.B. Pant Hospital in central Delhi, said the “hospital is not affected by the outage” and the “situation is directory monitored by Delhi health department”.
“We have not faced any difficulty since afternoon. Yesterday (Monday) also we were able to cope up with the failure through back-up system,” Khurana told IANS.
“No operations or OPD was affected. We still have a 9-hour back up system,” Khurana added.
The states affected Tuesday were Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, Haryana, Delhi, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, West Bengal, Odisha, Jharkhand, Sikkim, Assam, Meghalaya, Tripura, Nagaland, Manipur, Mizoram and Arunachal Pradesh.
These states account for half of India’s 1.2 billion population.
Delhi government’s principal health secretary Anshu Prakash said: “There is no panic situation as all the hospitals are well-prepared to tackle the power failure.”
“We have been monitoring all Delhi government hospitals. There is a 24-hour back-up system run on diesel for all hospitals,” Prakash told IANS.
“Operation theatres have a well-managed power back up. For wards we are ensuring the basic of fan, lights and other essentials is being maintained,” Prakash added.
