Fatal hitch: 3 children die after power outage at hospital

Hospital officials at Nsanje district hospital say investigations are underway to establish whether three children died at the health facility due to an abrupt power cut.

Reports say the three children died soon after power went off in the new wave of power black outs.

Hospital spokesperson Stanley Chirombo said it was too early to conclude that the children died because power went off.

“As a hospital, we establish a death audit for every death and there are several factors we look into. Until that is done, it is too early to conclude that the deaths were due to the power black-out,” said Chirombo.

He said the x-ray and the maternity departments are highly affected by the power cuts.

He said the hospital is supposed to have a standby generator but said sometimes it is not used due to lack of money, saying it needs about 120 litres of fuel everyday which costs over K100, 000 per day.

“The ORT which we receive from the government is too small to have this genset operational every-day,” he said.

Electricity Supply Corporation of Malawi (Escom) says power black outs are now back in full swing due to inadequate electricity supply blamed on faults on low water levels.

In a statement, Escom says currently Aggreko generators are online but the main power supplier, Egenco, is experiencing restrictions to supply to Escom due to failure of their two machines at Kapichira and also failure of the 20MW diesel generators at Mapanga.

“This, combined with further decline in water flow, has resulted in reduction of available power by 86.48MW,” says Escom.

The power distributor says as such it has been forced to implement a six hour rolling power rationing.

Escom says customers have been divided into three groups of A, B and C, with one group starting from 5am to 11am, followed by 10am to 4pm group and the last load-shedding period from 3pm to 9pm.

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