Hospital fault sparks patient danger

BLACKOUTS: electricity has been cut three times in seven days at All Saints Hospital, Grange Avenue, Werneth

A HOSPITAL chief has slammed its electricity company, claiming deaf and mentally-ill patients have been put in danger by a series of power cuts.

Dr Naser Fouad, chief executive of St George Healthcare, which runs All Saints Hospital in Werneth, claims power was out for more than 12 hours during two of three incidents last week. One of the outages caused a specially-designed fire alarm for the deaf to fail.

The intermittent blackouts have been caused by a faulty underground cable. Emergency food supplies have had to be brought in to cover the hospital’s inability to produce meals, and special pillows designed to wake patients in a fire have also been also out of action.

Staff prepared a “disaster plan” to move the 19 patients to nearby hospitals in case of fire.

Dr Fouad will meet electricity company officials about the continuing problems next month.

He said: “All our patients have sensory impairment. All are very vulnerable and have psychological issues. This problem happened three times in the last seven days.

“Under Care Quality Commission rules, if power is out we implement a disaster plan. The welfare of our patients is our first priority.”

Electricity North West have attempted to fix the problem several times, but it keeps returning.

Engineers have investigated the precise location of the faulty cable: “The nature of these faults makes them very difficult to identify,”said a spokesman.








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