It’s the same old story that emerges from an unfortunate incident in an ICU in a district civil hospital at Ahmednagar that killed 11 patients on Saturday, mostly seniors being treated for COVID-19. Preliminary observations point out utter disregard for the recommendations made by fire auditors, employees inadequately trained or untrained in emergency response, ill-maintained electrical and life support equipment, human error (negligence), and inordinate delay in releasing the funds for state-run hospitals that were asked to get fire safety audits conducted and implement the recommendations made early this year. The trigger for the state-wide plan was an incident in January this year in which 10 newborn infants died in a fire in the Sick Newborn Care Unit of the district hospital at Bhandara.

Both public and private hospitals had been affected by a series of incidents this year. In April, 15 COVID ICU patients died in a fire at the Vijay Vallabh Hospital in Virar. A month before it, a fire claimed the lives of 11 patients in a private COVID-designated hospital in a mall at Mumbai’s Bhandup. In another tragedy in April, 24 COVID patients died when a leaking oxygen tank stopped their life support at a municipal hospital in Nashik. There have been incidents of hospitals catching fire in the past decade across the country.  Last year, Rajkot, Ahmedabad and Vijayawada reported over 20 deaths in hospital fires. Kolkata’s 95-death fire of 2011 remains one of the scariest incidents. Three years ago, 11 patients died in a fire at ESIC Hospital in Marol, Mumbai. A spate of deadly fires in Maharashtra hospitals doesn’t reflect any better on the state’s stand-out image.