EVALUATION OF TECHNICAL AND COST IMPACT OF ERRACTIC POWER SUPPLY ON SERVICE DELIVERY IN FEDERAL MEDICAL CENTRE, OWO

Abstract

Erratic power supply has been one of the major problems militating against the effective quality healthcare service delivery in Nigeria, this has made it expedient to examine and analyse the effects of poor power supply on health facility. This research work evaluated the technical and cost impacts of erratic power supply on Federal Medical Centre (FMC), Owo as a case study. In this study, the power source to the hospital was identified. Determination of the power consumption at Federal Medical Centre (FMC), Owo was done by calculating the individual power consumption of all the electrical gadgets such as medical equipment, refrigerators, freezers, fans, air conditioners, bulbs, laboratory equipments etc in different wards and offices within the hospital, evaluating the total power consumption by all the electrical gadgets in watts and kilowatts and converted the total load in kW to kVA using 70% of the total load as the diversity factor. The technical impact of power supply reliability on health care delivery at the hospital was evaluated using performance indices and correlation analysis. The hospital is divided into two zones, each zone of the hospital has a backup power supply of 500kVA heavy duty generator. The data for the cost of fuel consumption and the cost of electricity consumptions in kilowatt hour for the period of twelve months as well as cost of maintenance and death rate for the period of twelve months (January 2018 to December 2018) were collated from the hospital. Based on the result obtained from the data analysis using line graphs and bar charts, it was observed that the cost of fueling the generator as well as cost of maintenance of the Generator to ensure steady power supply is higher compared to that of power supply from the national grid for the period studied.