PRETORIA, Gauteng — The Gauteng Department of Health has commenced urgent electrical infrastructure repairs at Steve Biko Academic Hospital, temporarily interrupting power to critical care, neonatal, paediatric, and obstetrics units. The phased intervention aims to replace aging switchgear and upgrade uninterruptible power supply (UPS) systems, even as the department warns that its annual budget is increasingly insufficient to meet the demands of rapid population growth and heavy cross-provincial patient referrals.
On Saturday, the maternity ward on levels 8 and 9 experienced a loss of power from morning until afternoon. A Gauteng Department of Health spokesperson explained that outdated switchovers were causing dangerous delays in backup generators activating during municipal grid power failures.
“The delay was caused by switches which were old, and we have now started the process to change them to new ones so that when there is no power, there is an easy flow during the changeover,” the spokesperson stated.
The replacement intervention, which began in September 2025, is being executed in deliberate phases to avoid interrupting the entire facility. The spokesperson confirmed that the UPS system upgrades are already complete. During the recent work, medical staff and doctors carefully assisted in the temporary relocation of high-risk and critical patients who rely heavily on continuous electricity. Full normalization of hospital operations is expected to take approximately 16 hours as these relocated patients are safely moved back to their original wards.
Steve Biko Academic Hospital remains one of Gauteng’s busiest medical facilities, serving the Tshwane district and accepting complex referrals from as far as Limpopo, Mpumalanga, and the North West. Despite the province’s health budget seeing a slight increase over the last three financial years—rising from R66 billion in the 2025/2026 period to R70.3 billion in the current financial year—the department maintains this allocation is inadequate.
“We have many people coming into the province through migration,” the spokesperson noted, highlighting that Gauteng’s four academic hospitals, including the largest academic hospital in the southern hemisphere, are consistently overwhelmed. They added that national budget allocations are often based on catchment numbers that do not accurately reflect the actual, inflated patient load driven by inter-provincial referrals.
The department also pushed back against recent investigations into frequent equipment failures raised by patients and opposition parties, such as the Democratic Alliance, which recently alleged that hospital operations were halted for a month due to air conditioning failures.
The hospital is indeed overwhelmed, the spokesperson acknowledged, but cautioned that political actors must remain factual in their assessments of facility maintenance. Ultimately, the spokesperson emphasized that addressing the overarching funding challenge rests with the Premier, who has the appropriate governmental platforms to escalate and ventilate the matter.
Until those systemic budget adjustments are realized, the Gauteng Department of Health will continue its phased, priority-driven infrastructure upgrades to ensure patient safety and operational resilience at Steve Biko Academic Hospital.