These blackouts impact not only the general community, but health professionals and hospitals are on edge.
Blackouts impact not only the general community, but also hospitals and health entities. Photo: LUMA Twitter.
In the last two weeks there have been problems with the flow of electricity on the Island, the distribution and transmission of the electrical infrastructure They have been, for nearly a year, in the hands of the private company LUMA.
LUMA has been criticized by the community in general and artists in the region, who attribute to the company a lack of experience to face a responsibility in the fluctuation of electrical energy that is causing damage in many parts of Puerto Rico.
LUMA’s president, Wayne Stensby, said in an interview with the region’s media that, in the coming months, the company has taken measures such as employee training, increasing its inventory and coordinating with government agencies.
But these failures not only affect the general community, in private and public spaces, in educational institutions, but also in hospitals, clinics, and health entities that require constant electrical flow for the use of certain devices of the that some patients depend on, putting the lives of some citizens at risk.
“In a meeting with the members of the board of directors of the Hospital Association, they told me that they are having many voltage validation problems, which is a very serious problem, especially with the most sensitive medical equipment”, confirmed the Lcdo . Jaime Plá, executive president of the Puerto Rico Hospital Association.
The lawyer who exposes the current situation of the hospitals, even comments on a case that is occurring in a hospital in Puerto Rico, “that for their CT Scan, (Computerized Tomography Scan) they had to send for parts, and the manufacturer says that it will no longer validate the warranty because the problem is not with the equipment, the problem is caused by voltage variations; it is quite expensive equipment”, confirms the licensee, and the same is happening with all equipment that requires a constant and safe flow of electricity.
Affecting everything from laboratories to computerized surgeries, “we have equipment that really requires constant voltage.” Normally, hospitals keep a record of the fluctuation of electrical energy, with which it is reported to the Department of Health, where a supervision process is carried out in this type of situation.
“It’s a serious problem, because there is no stability, and sometimes hospitals must, even with electricity, have their generators on, to achieve stability,” which puts both the institution and the hospitals at a disadvantage. patients.
This situation is not new, as affirmed by Lcdo. Plá, it has been registered and likewise a control and follow-up has been carried out, seeing that currently they appear more frequently and with longer durations, worsening the situation “even when the government personnel assures that the statistics say that there are an improvement in the system, although really we are all very concerned with the current situation”.
This leads both people and institutions to resort to elements such as solar panels, in order to prevent this fluctuation from impacting and unbalancing household appliances and devices, “before we bought solar panels to save energy; now we are buying solar panels to not run out of light”, confirms Plá.
But it is not only the lack of stability in the flow of energy, or the absence of it, but there are other factors that influence and put hospitals at a disadvantage, from an economic point of view, “a hospital with 300 beds, probably have a monthly bill close to $400,000 dollars”, which means that a year is approximately 7 or 8 million dollars.
To which, we must add the consumption of power plants, the repair of damaged systems and affected equipment, further increasing the number of expenses that hospitals must cover to fulfill their work of curing, caring for, preventing and protecting to the patients.
So far, no losses have been recorded in human life, thanks to the different strategies used by hospitals, in the face of the lack of electricity, even so, it is still a risk or problem for health, even in the civilian population, who must face losses or breakdowns in their electrical appliances, leaving them exposed to public health risks.
In the search for better energy sources, some hospitals are on their way to becoming independent from conventional electrical sources with a gas-fired power plant; This is the case of the Hospital de la Concepción, in which “80 or 90% can continue to operate without electricity”; but currently none is totally independent, since “a 400-bed hospital would need regarding 18 acres to mount solar panels,” confirms Atty. Plá, who also maintains that the use of gas as the main energy generator is quite expensive.
Protests are announced in Fortaleza
The situation continues to get complicated for users due to the continuous interruptions of the electrical service throughout the Island, the urban artist, René Pérez Joglar, known as Residente, called on the islanders to join the “Piquet once morest LUMA” on Resistance Street , in front of Fortaleza today from 5:00 pm, the also singer Kany García joined this initiative, through her Twitter account.
News in development.
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