Govt admits death due to outage

Minister of Health Atupele Muluzi has confirmed the death of a 17-year-old girl at Mangochi District Hospital following an electricity blackout.

The girl died as medical personnel were waiting for a standby generator to be moved from another ward to power up the operating theatre where she was due to undergo an emergency operation.

Mangochi South parliamentarian Lilian Patel brought the issue to Parliament yesterday as a matter of national importance, querying what led to the death and what the government had done to ensure this does not recur.

“The hospital has generators but they were not working. By the time the electrician was called to fix the problem, the woman had died. This was complete negligence on the part of the hospital. What happened for staff not to be available at hand to fix the generator,” she asked.

On his part, Muluzi confirmed receiving a report of the death of the girl due to power failure at the hospital last Thursday.

He said generators at Mangochi District Hospital were operated by an electrician who is an employee of the district council.

The hospital does not have an automatic standby generator, hence the need for personnel to move a smaller generator to the operating theatre when the need arises.

“The electrician was not available and this delayed critical care to the patient. It is a regrettable and unfortunate incident which hospital management has investigated and the electrician has since been dismissed for dereliction of duty and negligence,” he said.

But, when pressed further by Dowa North legislator Enos Chitatanga, Muluzi could not commit to compensating the family of the victim.

After the incident, the hospital is in the process of procuring an automatic generator with funding from a development partner.

Mangochi has close to one million people and the hospital acts as a referral for 59 health centres. n