‘Extreme humidity’: Bad weather affects equipment at Women’s and Children’s Hospital, cancelling multiple surgeries

Bad weather and equipment failure has forced multiple surgery cancellations at Adelaide’s Women’s and Children’s Hospital, with engineers scrambling to fix the problem.

Medical staff at the Adelaide’s Women’s and Children’s Hospital have had to postpone numerous non-urgent elective surgeries on Wednesday, due to bad weather causing equipment failure.

At least 13 non-urgent surgeries were called off after “extreme humidity” affected the sterilisation of equipment in a storage room, with more surgeries likely to be postponed this week until the problem is fixed.

Women's and Children's Hospital in North Adelaide is cancelling surgeries due to wild weather causing equipment failure. Picture: MATT LOXTON

The Women’s and Children’s Health Network (WCHN) apologised to any women, children and their families who had been affected, and said they expect to return to “full operating capacity next week”.

“Due to extreme humidity affecting equipment sterilisation in a storage room, we have had to postpone some non-urgent elective surgeries at the Women’s and Children’s Hospital this week,” WCHN said.

“All affected families are being contacted and will have their appointments rescheduled by the end of the week.

“All emergency surgery is going ahead, and we are assessing all urgent elective surgery on a case-by-case basis.”

Engineers are currently working to fix the fault.

Originally published as ‘Extreme humidity’: Bad weather affects equipment at Women’s and Children’s Hospital, cancelling multiple surgeries