It’s shocking to note that 107 persons, including several
children, have lost their lives in 11 major hospital fires in India during the
last five years. This miserable statistics prove the fact that hospitals in the
country are fast becoming fire traps due to sheer negligence and poor
maintenance of electric appliances as short-circuit is being blamed for most of
the fire incidents. It points out gross violations of the mandatory guideline
prepared by the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) with a view to
fireproof the hospitals, which among other measures has strongly recommended
internal fire safety audit be conducted in the hospitals on a regular basis. It
has also brought to light the nexus between the hospital authorities and a
section of unscrupulous government officials, who are entrusted to see proper
implementation of the safety rules.
If the government officials had done their work properly,
the lives of 18 persons, including two on duty nurses could be saved on May 1,
2021 at Patel Welfare Hospital in Gujarat, which was running without any fire
prevention system for years. The hospital authorities had managed to run the
show by submitting false documents and bribing the officials. The fact came to
light when an enquiry commission headed by Justice (Retd.) DA Mehta was
constituted to ascertain the causes behind the fire. It’s a pity that despite
this wake up call, even now several hospitals in the country are operating
without a proper fire-fighting system in place.
Another annoying factor is that in most of the fire cases in
hospitals, the accused, including hospital owners are out on bail making the
existing law ineffective to deal with hospital fire cases.
Thus, stringent laws should be passed to prevent the
hospitals and medical centres from flouting the guidelines prepared by NDMA. At
the same time hospital authorities nationwide should be categorically asked to
conduct fire safety audits without delay to prevent any further loss of
precious human lives. In several states, buildings less than nine metres do not
require fire safety clearances as per the prevailing law. The law needs to be
amended as many healthcare facilities are running on single-storied buildings
without obtaining the necessary permission from the fire department. Delhi
government has recently been forced to change the law after a fire incident in
a hospital which was being operated in the ground and another floor. With the
memory of the devastating fire at AMRI Hospital in Kolkata in 2011 which
claimed more than 90 lives is still fresh in our minds, it is not wrong to
expect the government and the hospital authorities to remain cautious about all
the safety measures. Instead, the lackluster attitude shown by the management
of various Indian hospitals are shameful to say the least and virtually playing
with the lives of the patients admitted there for treatment. Clearly, the bucks
do not stop at Jhansi, where 18 newborns were burnt alive in last month; rather
it is an indication of many such tragic incidents in near future due to the
callousness of the authorities.
