Egyptian Doctors' Syndicate: Electricity crisis threatens patients' lives

The Egyptian Doctors’ Syndicate said that the power outage crisis is threatening the lives of patients in hospitals, especially in intensive care units, operating rooms and neonates in incubators. “It increases the risks that doctors face while they carry out their duties,” he said.

In a statement that was released yesterday, the Syndicate cited an incident in which the electricity crisis took its toll on doctors carrying out hysterectomy surgery on Monday at the Ismailia General Hospital with only lights from mobile phones.

The statement pointed out that the recurrent power outages that occurred on Tuesday across all the villages and centres at the Kafr El-Sheikh governorate, which suffered from eight outages over a period of 13 hours caused a case of complete paralysis in various commercial and industrial activities in the governorate.

The Syndicate explained that the power outages in the hospitals of Kafr El-Sheikh and Desouk led to the halt of work in a number of urgent surgical operations, as well as the stopping a number of dialysis machines and all neonate incubators.

Electricity outages at the general hospital in Kafr El-Sheikh forced the hospital to contact the families of children in incubators and ask them to take their children and leave the hospital.