Gurgaon: Three years ago, a short circuit at Civil Hospital resulted in an outage lasting more than 12 hours, disrupting OPD services.The memories of the prolonged power disruption of April 2023 will be a thing of the past now as patients undergoing critical treatment at Civil Hospital are set to get greater protection against power disruptions.Haryana govt is planning new backup systems for the ICU and high-dependency unit (HDU), while a separate generator will be installed at the govt mortuary on Mehrauli Road.The two projects, together estimated to cost Rs 26.39 lakh, are aimed at strengthening power reliability at key public healthcare facilities in Sector 10.“At Civil Hospital, public works department has proposed installation of two 40 KVA online UPS systems for the ICU, HDU and other medical equipment. The Rs 18.8 lakh work has a four-month completion period,” said a doctor.The UPS units will provide 30 minutes of backup at full load, giving critical-care equipment an additional power cushion during an outage. They will also protect equipment from voltage fluctuations, overcharging, short circuits and deep battery discharge.In April 2023, due to the outage, computers used for registration stopped functioning and staff had to switch to manual operations, with several patients having been turned away.The emergency and gynaecology wards, however, continued to receive power after their backup systems kicked in.At the time, around 450 patients were admitted at the hospital and more than 2,000 people visited the OPD every day, underlining the scale of disruption when the hospital’s electrical infrastructure fails.The new UPS system is specifically meant to support critical-care areas and medical equipment. It will also have alarms and monitoring features to alert staff about mains failure, low battery, overload and other electrical faults.The system will have one year of free maintenance, followed by provision for four years of comprehensive maintenance, according to the project document. This is intended to ensure that the backup infrastructure remains functional beyond installation.In a separate project, PWD has proposed a 40 KVA DG set for the mortuary on Mehrauli Road, at an estimated cost of Rs 7.5 lakh. The same project includes installation of security lights at Civil Hospital, Sector 10, and has a five-month completion period.The DG set will provide dedicated power backup to the mortuary. This is particularly relevant for a facility where refrigeration and other electrical services need to remain available while bodies await post-mortem examinations or handover to families.The tender document, however, does not establish that the mortuary has previously suffered a specific power failure incident, so the development should not be presented as a response to a documented mortuary outage.The two projects therefore address different but important aspects of public healthcare infrastructure: the ICU/HDU upgrade is directly aimed at protecting continuity of treatment for critically ill patients, while the mortuary generator is intended to ensure reliable power for post-death services.For a hospital already carrying a substantial patient load, the upgrades could reduce the disruption caused by electrical failures and provide greater reliability in areas where uninterrupted power is particularly important.
