KOTA KINABALU: The Sabah Health Department is ensuring patients at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital (HQE) here are safe despite facing power outage for almost half a day.
Sabah Health director Datuk Dr Rose Nani Mudin said the hospital experienced power disruptions starting 11.54am.
"It involved the twin towers, specialist clinic and old medical building block of the hospital here.
"At 12.08pm, the concession company Sediafiat had contacted Sabah Electricity Sdn Bhd (SESB) and started to troubleshoot at 12.29pm to identify the source of disruption," she said in a statement.
During the outage, Dr Rose said two existing generator sets and another backup were used for power supply at the hospital.
She added that SESB had also provided two portable generator sets from Melawa at Sepanggar while traffic police escorted the transfer of the power supply to the hospital.
After the portable generator sets were functioning, all wards and intensive care units were supplied with power except the operation theatres.
"To ensure that treatment services at HQE were not affected, a contingency plan was implemented by sending some patients to Queen Elizabeth II Hospital (HQE II).
"Surgical cases were also transferred to HQE II," she said.
At present, SESB and the concession company are still fixing the malfunctioning cables.
HQE is the second crucial facility to experience almost half day of power outage after Kota Kinabalu International Airport which lost electricity supply for almost 10 hours.