This is the moment surgeons are forced to use the flashlight feature on a mobile phone so they can see to operate on a patient during a partial power cut.
The incident took place at the Dr Gustavo A Rovirosa Perez Specialist Regional Hospital in the city of Villahermosa, capital of the southern Mexican state of Tabasco.
Video Credit: CEN
Another medic filmed the scene with his smartphone as a surgeon operated on a patient while a colleague held his phone above the incision to shine a light on the patient.
The surgeon was operating on the bile ducts of the patient who was under general anaesthetic.
The partial power cut affected the overhead lighting in the operating theatre for around 15 minutes although other electrical devices can be seen working.
One man is heard on the video complaining: “More than 10 minutes without light.”
The cameraman pans around at the end of the clip revealing that some areas of the hospital are lit up while others are in darkness.
Hospital director Juan Antonio Torres Trejo later revealed three separate blackouts had hit the hospital on the day.
He said a back-up generator was designed to maintain electrical supplies to the operating theatre but there had been a delay before the overhead lighting had returned during the third power cut.
Surgeons had been in the middle of the operation and decided their best option was to carry on using the light from a mobile phone. There is no report on the latest condition of the patient.
Guillermo Morelos Villegas, president of the Medical Society of the hospital, said: “It’s terrible, I understand it’s an old building, and that everything fails here, but it needs to have special measures for this kind of situation.”
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Story By: Ana Lacasa, Sub-Editor: Joseph Golder, Agency: Central European News
