'Hospitals operating without fire safety clearance'

Media reports indicate that hundreds of hospitals in India are being operated without clearances from the fire department. According to the NCRB data, 11,037 fire accidents took place in the country in the year 2019, taking the lives of 10,915 people.

Hyderabad: The Bhandara district hospital in Maharashtra was witness to a heart-wrenching tragedy. The fire at the hospital’s neonatal care unit led to the death of at least 10 infants aged below 3 months, in the early hours of last Saturday. The fire brigade managed to rescue only seven infants from the unit. Three died of burns and the smoke smothered seven others to death.

What greater misfortune can be there than the death of infants who were already admitted to the hospital due to illness! This accident reminds us of the death of three unfortunate beings in a fire accident at Kolhapur government hospital’s Intensive Care Unit in September.

Similarly, eight people had died when fire engulfed the Covid ICU ward of Ahmedabad’s Shreya Hospital in August. Around the same period, a fire accident at the Swarna Palace of Vijayawada took ten lives. Five persons died at a Covid care centre of Gujarat in the last week of November.

Expressing concern at the pathetic conditions prevailing at the hospitals in the country, the Supreme Court had called for a safety audit of all hospitals in the country. The Court had also sought a special district committee and a nodal officer for every hospital to audit the fire safety at Covid-19 care centres.

Media reports indicate that hundreds of hospitals are being operated without any clearances from the department of fire. Hapless lives are being lost as hospitals play with fire with utter disregard to safety norms and lack of accountability. According to the NCRB data, 11,037 fire accidents took place in the country in the year 2019, taking the lives of 10,915 people. The advanced countries are able to avert fire mishaps through the spread of awareness and also with the support of technology.

In our country, fire services at the field level remain appalling in their performance. Hospitals are becoming havens of death due to their lack of commitment to strictly follow fire prevention rules. In a span of ten years between 2010 and 2019, fire accidents took place in 33 hospitals across the country. As many as 95 people died in a fire accident that took place at AMRI hospital of South Kolkata in 2011.

In a similar accident at Sam hospital near Bhubaneshwar, 23 persons died due to fires resulting from a short circuit in the year 2016. In the year 2014, the World Health Organization had issued detailed guidelines on how to avert fire mishaps at hospitals. The organization had stipulated that patients should be evacuated only in the case of emergency and the focus should be always on preventing fire.

Smoke detectors and water sprinklers are the basic requirements to avert fire accidents. The Bhandara district general hospital was lacking even in these basic amenities. If the recurrence of such mishaps is to be averted, all the hospitals should pass the test of fire by establishing a comprehensive fire prevention mechanism. Fire safety at hospitals is possible only when they adopt the latest technological gadgets, apart from training up their staff on their usage.