NEW DELHI, Jan 9: In a shocking incident that the president Ram Nath Kovind and the prime minister Narendra Modi called “heart-wrenching,” at least 10 newborns were killed in a fire in a government hospital in Bhandara town in Maharashtra in the early hours of Saturday.
The police said seven children in the same ward were saved by the hospital staff but they could not move all the 17 children admitted in the outborn section in the hospital. By the time the fire brigade arrived and the fire was brought under control, 10 newborns had lost their lives.
The cause of the fire was not immediately known and the doctors said most of the children died due to suffocation while only one child had sustained fatal burn injuries while two others were found to have suffered only minor burn injuries.
According to the Bhandara district collector Sandeep Kadam, the fire broke out around 1.30 A.M. when only two nurses and a helper were present in the ward. The staff made efforts to rescue all the children but continuous explosions hampered their work. The deceased included children born a few days ago to a few months old.
The outborn section is for children born elsewhere but referred to the government hospital for some kind of special treatment.
The Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray ordered a probe after speaking to state Health Minister Rajesh Tope and the district collector and the district superintendent of police. Thackeray also said the government would conduct an audit of all neo-natal care units across the state to ensure safety. The state government also announced Rs 5 lakh as compensation to the kin of the deceased. No post-mortems were conducted and the bodies were handed over to the families.
According to the Minister for Relief and Rehabilitation Vijay Wadettiwar, the government has summoned teams from National Fire Safety College and Visveswaraya National Institute of Technology, Nagpur, to find out the reasons behind the mishap. But he also admitted that a proposal for fire safety equipment for the hospital had been pending since May last year. “What happened to it will also be found out,” he said. He also said that the newborn section was inaugurated in 2016 without requisite fire safety clearance. “We will also find out why that was done,” he said.
President Ram Nath Kovind, the Prime Minister, the former Congress president Rahul Gandhi, the union home minister Amit Shah, the Maharashtra governor Bhagat Singh Koshyari, the former chief minister Devendra Fadnavis, and many other leaders have expressed deep condolences at the “heart-wrenching tragedy causing loss of precious lives.”
(Manas Dasgupta)