Hospital fire kills at least 10 newborns in Bhandara, Maharashtra

At least 10 infants died in a fire at the Sick Newborn Care Unit (SNCU) of Bhandara District General Hospital in Maharashtra in the early hours of Saturday.

The District Collector, Sandeep Kadam said that the fire broke out in the outborn section of the hospital around 1.30 am. "At the time, there were two nurses and a helper in the children’s ward. They immediately raised an alarm. The fire brigade was called out. But, before it arrived, staffers tried to rescue the children and managed to save seven infants. Rescue efforts were affected by continuous explosions inside the ward. The staffers couldn’t rescue all the children."

He said that the SNCU is a 36-bed ward. "As on Friday night, 17 children were admitted. The seven who were rescued and have been admitted to another ward. We do not plan to move them to another hospital yet," he said. Till now the cause of the fire is unknown.

Civil Surgeon Dr Pramod Khandate said, “Most newborns died due to suffocation. One baby had fatal burn injuries, and two others had minor burns injuries. The rest inhaled a lot of smoke.”

CM Uddhav Thackeray ordered a probe into this matter. The state government also announced Rs 5 lakh as compensation to the family of the deceased. No post-mortems were conducted, and the bodies were handed over to the families.

A proposal for fire safety equipment for the hospital had been pending since May last year. The newborn section was inaugurated in 2016 without requisite fire safety clearance.

Source: The Indian Express

Written by Siddhant Sharma