Member of the National Assembly health committee addressing a press conference after their visit to PIMS hospital. SCREENGRAB
ISLAMABAD:
The cause of the fire that killed 14 newborns at the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS) remained unclear, with the National Assembly’s health committee reporting conflicting accounts about what triggered the blaze, including claims that a spark came from an old air conditioner despite being told the unit had not been working for a long time.
Speaking to the media after an unofficial visit to PIMS on Thursday, committee chairman Dr Mahesh Kumar said that the CCTV footage also did not establish that the AC was the source of the fire, while possible faults in the oxygen pipeline and electrical wiring were being examined.
On early Wednesday morning, a fire broke out on the third floor of the Mother and Child Hospital at PIMS. Fifteen newborns were in the ward at the time. 14 suffered severe burns and later died, while one child survived and was rescued. Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif formed an inquiry committee to investigate the incident and suspended Health Secretary Aslam Ghori.
While speaking to the media, Kumar said members had been told that a spark from an old AC had triggered the fire, but the unit had not been working for a long time. The committee was also told that the two other ACs in the nursery were portable. More importantly, he said, neither the staff present at the time nor the CCTV footage could establish where the spark had come from.
“We have reached the conclusion that the source of the fire was not known to anyone,” Kumar said.
He said the committee had asked PIMS Executive Director (ED) whether the CCTV footage showed the fire starting from the old AC, but the answer was no. “The ED told us that it is not clear from the CCTV that the spark came from the old AC,” Kumar said.
Read: 14 newborns killed in fire at PIMS Hospital in Islamabad
The committee therefore wanted to establish whether the fire could instead have originated in the electrical wiring or oxygen pipeline. Kumar said the speed with which the fire spread made the oxygen supply an important part of the investigation.
“The fire spread within one minute, so oxygen could have been a catalyst,” he said. “Either there was a fault in the oxygen pipe, or there was something wrong with the wiring.”
The chairman said the committee had heard different versions from doctors and nurses about what happened in the nursery. Nurses on duty told members they had been working when the fire suddenly broke out, leaving them unable to say where the initial spark had come from.
“No one saw where the spark came from and how it happened,” Kumar said.
The committee also questioned why newborns had been kept in the old nursery in the first place. Kumar said the building dated back to 1990 and that PIMS had a newer block where, in the committee’s view, the nursery should have been located.
“Our concern is that there should not have been a nursery here,” he said. “The nursery unit children are the most important. They had to be kept in a new block.”
“We have doctors in this committee and other doctors as well. In our opinion, this nursery was not built to keep these children. There was supposed to be a gynae ward here, and the children had to be kept in the new, well-equipped block.”
He said the committee had already put a number of questions to the hospital authorities and would assess the answers before determining responsibility. “We will see on merit. We have given them some questions and we want their answers,” Kumar said.
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has said the government inquiry committee would give its findings within 24 to 48 hours, he added. “We will see whether it has made the right decision or the wrong decision,” Kumar said.
He also appealed to members of the National Assembly, specifically Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf lawmakers, to participate in the health committee’s proceedings. “We request them that whether they go to other committees or not, please come to this committee. This is an important issue,” he said.
“There are doctors and surgeons in this committee. We will come together and see the report and tell you who is responsible for this issue.”
Kumar said the health committee members had visited PIMS unofficially today and would ask the National Assembly speaker, Ayaz Sadiq, to convene a formal meeting urgently.
Another committee member speaking to the media said the committee had also sought details of the hospital’s emergency preparedness and safety checks. “We have asked the committee to tell us, in case of fire, when was the last drill and how frequently was it conducted,” he said.
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The committee wanted details of the hospital’s fire-safety drills, electrical audits and fire alarms, including when the last checks had been carried out and whether the alarms were functioning when the fire broke out.
“This is such an old building, 30 years old. When was the last audit done?” he said. The committee also wanted to establish how many human errors may have occurred during the incident, how many lives could potentially have been saved, and why those lives were not saved.
He also said the committee needed to establish whether there had been a problem with the oxygen pipelines or an unusual concentration of oxygen that could have accelerated the fire.
Another committee member, Aliya Kamran, raised questions about the fire alarms, asking how many were installed and whether they were functional. He said the committee had received conflicting statements about who was on duty when the fire broke out.
“The different statements that we have received — there was either no one on duty, or if they were on duty, there are questions about who was actually there,” she said.
The committee’s visit also raised questions about what happened in rooms immediately adjoining the nursery. Members inspected the kangaroo room, where four mothers and their newborns had reportedly been present. Committee member Aliya Kamran said the circumstances surrounding those four children needed to be examined alongside the deaths in the nursery.
Aliya also called for the resignation of both the PIMS executive director and the health minister, describing the deaths as a major failure. “I believe the ED PIMS and the minister should resign because this is a very big incident,” she said.
She said the scale of the tragedy had to be understood from the perspective of the families who had lost their newborn children. “People keep their children in their stomach for nine months, they deliver them, and then this happens to their child,” Aliya said.
“I believe the decent thing to do is for the ED PIMS and health minister to resign. Our demand is that they should resign.”
The committee said it would examine the evidence, CCTV footage, technical systems, staff statements and the government inquiry before determining responsibility. Kumar stressed that the parliamentary committee would assess the matter “on merit” rather than politically.
