Six newborns were burnt to death and several others injured in a fire which broke out in the Services Hospital nursery ward on Thursday, making it the fourth such incident to occur within the span of a year.
Chaos reigned in the nursery ward where newborns, most of them premature babies, are kept in a ‘neat and clean’ atmosphere until they are healthy enough to be taken home. Often, even attendants are not allowed to enter the nursery ward because of the newborns’ susceptibility to diseases and only select nurses take care of the children.
All this care was reduced to ashes when a fire broke out in the nursery, burning down the ward and the equipment in it. The thick smoke suffocated some children while others burned to death.
As soon as news of the fire spread, the people present in the hospital tried to run outside.
Rescue sources said the fire broke out due to an electric short circuit in an air conditioner. They said a nearby mattress caught the sparks coming off it, causing the fire to spread and produce thick smoke.
They added that the rescue teams continued operations for around two hours and evacuated all the 21 children present in the ward. Three of them were already dead at the time of the evacuation, while three more children had succumbed to burn injuries till the filing of this report.
The workers stated that the burning mattress produced thick smoke and that it was speculated that most of the children died of suffocation.
“Since it is a highly sensitive area and no attendants were allowed inside, very few people were present inside the ward to evacuate the children right when the fire erupted,” they said.
“We should thank God that the oxygen cylinders in the ward did not catch fire, otherwise we would have an explosion on our hands instead of a fire.”
Hospital stakeholders have raised eyebrows on the recurring incidents of fire at the Services Hospital which is considered one of the better equipped public health establishments. Last year, a fire broke out in the coronary care unit (CCU), while previously the ICU and Bano Meraj surgical operation theatre were also gutted, with equipment worth millions destroyed.
The parents of the children in the ward raised hue and cry over the unfortunate incident, calling it a failure on the part of the hospital administration, which did not take adequate measures to avoid such repeated incidents.
“Unfortunately, the places which should be the safest become the target of such incidents. The administration is responsible for this negligence. They will now hold enquiries and then the matter will be hushed like the previous times but our kids will not come back,” said Nasreen Bibi who lost her child in the incident.
On the other hand, Services Hospital MS Dr Rehana Malik said the hospital is not a planned construction and a lot of new blocks are being built. “We have old electrical wiring in the entire hospital which needs to be checked and improved,” she said.
In reply to a question, she said the hospital was conducting a high profile enquiry to probe the cause of the incident and could only comment on the cause of the fire later.
Commenting on the issue, CM’s Advisor on Health Khwaja Salman Rafique said the pertinet question is that why the Services Hospital is experiencing these recurring fires.
He said all hospitals in Punjab have been asked to update their electrical and emergency response systems to avoid such incidents. He added that the most immediate thing is to provide the remaining newborns with adequate medical care. “We will probe the incident and find out the cause and take adequate measures to avoid it in future,” he added.
Because Services refuses to learn from experience
