Broken air-conditioning at the Charlotte Maxeke Johannesburg Hospital has led to more than 100 operations being cancelled in the last two weeks despite a huge backlog caused by the COVID-19 crisis.
All the operating theatres are affected except for two orthopaedic theatres.
Medical staff are very frustrated that they cannot do their jobs and patients suffer from the delayed operations.
It seems that poor maintenance is once again to blame despite more than R200 million spent at this hospital in the past five years to fix deteriorating infrastructure.
Last year about 2000 operations were cancelled or deferred at this hospital for various reasons, and surgery waiting lists have grown alarmingly because of resources diverted to treat COVID-19 patients.
It is unacceptable that a major hospital has to cancel surgeries because of broken machinery.
I hope that the air-conditioning is fixed as soon as possible and measures taken to ensure that surgery is not crippled by avoidable equipment failures.