Hundreds of procedures have been cancelled at NHS Grampian as a decontamination unit remains closed.
Last week, NHS Grampian said an unknown substance had been found on instruments after they had been processed at the Central Decontamination Unit (CDU) at the Foresterhill site in Aberdeen.
The health board says there aren’t enough instruments for all operations and is focusing on emergency operations, caesarean sections and cancer care.
STV News understands it could be up to eight weeks until the unit is reopened, with a faulty compressor thought to be the issue.
So far, 429 dental outpatient appointments and 298 elective surgical procedures have been postponed, with NHS Grampian apologising to those who have been affected.
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NHS Grampian chief executive Laura Skaife-Knight said: “I want to apologise to the many hundreds of patients who have had their operations cancelled over the last week.
“When you’ve had a long wait for an operation that is bad enough, and many of these patients have had that, so to have operations cancelled at short notice, I sincerely apologise for that.”
NHS Grampian have now asked other health boards to assist in the cleaning of instruments to try and reduce the number of cancellations.
NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde, NHS Highland and NHS Orkney are currently working with the health board as the issue continues.
Ms Skaife-Knight added: “We’ve had some offers of mutual aid from health boards across Scotland, including Glasgow, and we are replacing the equipment and doing some repair work, and we hope to get operations back up and running as quickly as possible.”
It’s understood that it will take at least four weeks to revalidate equipment from the unit once any issues are fixed.
Another Decontamination Unit at Woodend in Aberdeen remains open.
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