By Loushe Jordaan Gilbert

The Western Cape Department of Health has confirmed that they have several measures in place to deal with the expected influx of emergency cases over the festive season.

With emergency medical services expecting to respond to an average of 60,000 calls in the province between 15 December and 15 January, Luke Albert, spokesperson to Health MEC Nomafrench Mbombo said the department is fully prepared and expects a smooth sailing festive season.

“The preparedness of the department starts ahead of the festive season, and we have made good progress and we have set things in place especially in terms of medical personnel. We have ensured that we have sufficient staff on hand and that we have enough resources for when the need arises,” he added.

As Eskom remains uncertain about the loadshedding schedule, Albert said they have contingency plans in place.

“We have been mitigating loadshedding for a while now and we can confidently say that ten of our facilities have been exempted from loadshedding stages 6 and below. We also have various facilities across the province utilizing diesel operated generators and beyond that we have plans to make sure that should anything go wrong, we are able to operate without any challenges,” he reiterated.

Albert said that on an annual basis they witness an increase in trauma cases which require all hands-on deck and for this reason they have ensured that they have enough staff available to assist.

“We have ensured that emergency centres and the emergency medical services (EMS) are well-equipped to manage the period of increased demand. We are only allowing 5% of our personnel to go on leave during this time to ensure that we have enough people to respond to any form of emergencies during this time,” he added.