Surgeries to resume despite back-up power problems

Photo / Janna Dixon

Surgeries are set to go ahead today despite continuing issues with back-up power to life saving equipment at Auckland and Starship Hospitals.

A raft of elective and acute surgeries were postponed when generators serving both hospitals broke down after a routine six-monthly test yesterday.

They did not come back online when repairs carried out by technicians were tested that afternoon.

The failure would have cut all electricity to the hospitals in a power outage and left equipment running on short term batteries.

Auckland District Health Board incident controller Ngaire Buchanan said a test at 7am today found the generators were working again, but with a fault in their automation system.

They would have to be manually activated if there was a power outage, she said.

"As a result, the decision has been taken for all of today's planned theatre activity to proceed.

"Technicians remain on-site and a further test is planned for late today once the surgical caseload has been completed."

Reports to the Herald said wards at Auckland Hospital were left without power when the generators failed during the testing yesterday morning.

The Auckland Hospital main building and Starship Hospital were the only buildings affected by the failure, Ms Buchanan said.

Both buildings were working on mains power and it an outage at the hospitals was unlikely, she said.

"There was no risk to the safety of any patient."