Islamabad, hospital fire: 14 newborns dead

NEW DELHI - At least fourteen newborns have died following a fire which broke out on Wednesday in the maternity ward of the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS) in Islamabad. According to a local television channel, there were 16 babies in the ward at the time of the fire. Emergency services responded to an emergency call made shortly before 7 am local time, which was 4 am in Italia.

According to initial reports, the fire is believed to have broken out as a result of the explosion of an air-conditioning compressor. Rescue workers say they rescued 19 people: ten women, seven children and two men. According to a parent of one of the victims, the ward did not have any fire safety systems in place and, at the time of the explosion, all the access doors were locked except for one.

In Pakistan, fires in large buildings are common, often due to inadequate safety standards and building regulations, as well as poor enforcement of the rules. In January, more than 65 people died in a fire at a shopping centre in the port city of Karachi, where, in 2012, a tragedy claimed the lives of at least 250 workers at a garment factory in the Baldia Town district, when a fire destroyed an entire building that lacked fire escapes.

The fire in Islamabad is one of the most serious ever to have broken out in a hospital in Pakistan, a country with a population of almost 260 million where the public health service suffers from inadequate facilities and a lack of sufficient funding to meet the needs of that large section of the population who cannot afford to access private healthcare.

“The circumstances leading up to the incident must be thoroughly investigated, those responsible must be identified, and the strictest possible measures must be taken,” said Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, referring to the fire. The hospital where the tragedy occurred is one of the largest in Islamabad, a planned city built in the 1960s to serve as the country’s capital.