A fire broke out on the first floor at Aundh District Hospital (ADH) due to an electrical short circuit on Sunday at around 1:30pm. The fire started in the storeroom located next to the 24-bed Special Newborn Care Unit (SNCU). Fortunately, no casualties have been reported, and 13 newborns were safely evacuated from the SNCU.
As per the officials, the fire was caused by a ceiling fan, and the clothes and linen stored below it caught fire, leading to a large blaze and causing panic in the hospital. However, activists claim that the fire broke out in the SNCU ward and that officials are hiding the truth.
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Health activist Sharad Shetty said, “The fire broke out during the daytime, and no fire alarms were heard. No sprinklers installed in the hospital were activated. The fire broke out in the SNCU, not in the store room, and officials are hiding it. After the Nanded fire incident, where 37 patients, including 18 newborns, died in four days, the government asked all the public hospitals to conduct a fire audit. Today, the lives of 13 newborns were saved but what if this incident occurred at midnight, when the staff were asleep? This incident raises many questions about the authorities, who are playing with people’s lives.”
According to the fire brigade, the call was received around 1.28pm, and the fire tender reached the hospital around 2pm. Fire brigade officials said the hospital staff extinguished the fire before they arrived.
Dr Nagnath Yempalle, district civil surgeon and head of ADH, “The fire broke out in the store room and the smoke from the room entered into the SNCU. Our staff successfully doused the fire before the fire brigade team arrived. Out of these 13 neonates, two were on ventilator support. All these babies from the SNCU have been shifted from the SNCU to the pediatric ward. The SNCU will be further cleaned and sterilised after which the babies will be shifted back.”
