NA panel suspects ‘technical fault’ behind Pims fire tragedy

• 14 infants killed in fire at Pims hospital in Islamabad.
• Mahesh Kumar says technical fault may have caused fire.
• Mustafa Kamal earlier blamed an AC spark for incident.
  

Members of the National Assembly’s Standing Committee on National Health Services, Regulations and Coordination visited the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS) on Thursday to review the circumstances surrounding a fire at the hospital’s nursery.

During the visit, NA health panel member Mahesh Kumar Malani said that a “technical fault” may have caused the fire at Pims that killed 14 infants.

“We suspect that there was a technical fault in the ward,” said Malani while talking to the media after visiting the incident site.

Federal Health Minister Mustafa Kamal had earlier attributed the incident to a spark from an air conditioner.

Talking to the media, Malani said officials had told the committee that the fire may have started from an air conditioner, but the claim had not been confirmed.

“We were told that the fire started from an air conditioner. We were also told that it was an old AC and had not been working for quite some time,” he said.

Malani said the committee would convene an emergency meeting and seek answers from the relevant authorities. “We are calling a committee meeting and have sought answers to our questions,” he said.

“This is an important matter. Once the report comes, we will tell who is responsible,” he added.

Malani further said the CCTV footage reviewed by the committee had not established where the fire originated. He said a nurse had told the committee that staff were working when the fire suddenly broke out.

“The CCTV video did not show where the fire started,” he said, adding that the affected ward dated back to 1990.

“This Pims ward was built in 1990. There should not have been a nursery here. The affected nursery was not fit for keeping newborn babies,” he added.

He said the investigation would also examine the maintenance of the old nursery and whether the right personnel had been assigned to the relevant duties.

“It will also have to be seen whether the old nursery had been maintained,” he said.

He said the exact cause of the fire remained unknown and that the committee would make further decisions after its emergency meeting and receipt of the relevant report.

“We also need to see whether there was the right man for the right job in the hospital,” said Malani.

Pims tragedy

Fourteen infants died after a fire broke out in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) of Pims on Wednesday morning.

The nursery housed 15 newborns at the time, according to Pims officials, with only one infant rescued. Here is what we know so far about the incident, the response and the investigations.

The fire broke out at around 6:45am in the NICU on the third floor of the Mother and Child Health (MCH) ward.

Rescue sources said an air-conditioner compressor exploded inside the nursery. The Pims administration’s initial report, however, said a nebuliser indicating the quantity of oxygen alongside an incubator exploded. The report also said video footage showed a flame emerging from an air conditioner.

The report said oxygen subsequently caught fire, while smoke travelled through pipes and entered the infants’ breathing systems. It said the children died after the oxygen supply was cut off and from burns sustained in the fire.

Federal Minister for Parliamentary Affairs Tariq Fazal Chaudhry separately said the fire was caused by a short circuit and that most of the children died from asphyxiation.