Fire audits needed in Covid-19 hospitals

A fire engulfing any building with people in it is distressing. It is all the more so when the building is a hospital where patients have come to be cured of their illnesses. A fire at Ramesh Hospital in Vijayawada on Sunday morning claimed the lives of 10 Covid-19 patients. The hospital, a five-storey building, was a hotel. In the wake of the pandemic and the rise in demand for medical treatment, the hotel was leased to be run as a Covid-care hospital. Some 31 patients and several staff were in the hospital when the fire, which is said to have been triggered by a short circuit in the reception area, broke out. As flames quickly leapt up the floors, several patients, who were already struggling with breathing problems, suffocated and died. Around 20 patients and staff have been injured. Only a few days earlier, a fire in the critical care unit at a Covid-19 hospital in Ahmedabad claimed the lives of eight patients. This fire, too, was triggered by a short circuit, but in medical equipment, that quickly set alight the building.

Hospitals are particularly vulnerable to conflagrations as oxygen cylinders are stored in large numbers in basements and sometimes close to patients. Oxygen is also piped to various rooms, which means that a spark can quickly become a raging fire in a matter of minutes.
A Covid-care hospital would be all the more susceptible to fire accidents as oxygen use by patients in such hospitals is far higher than in other hospitals. One would have thought that this would have made hospital authorities all the more cautious. Sadly, it did not.

Preliminary investigations have revealed that there were defects in the wiring at the Vijayawada hotel-turned-hospital. Why did civic authorities give it permission to function as a hotel in the first place? Did the fire brigade okay the operation of the hotel? Didn’t the hospital management check the building papers before they leased it to run a hospital? Apparently, hospital authorities were aware of the faulty wiring but ignored the problem. It does seem that in the rush to make quick profits from treating Covid-19 patients, safety of patients was not a priority. The Ahmedabad hospital fire underscores another major problem that has surfaced in the wake of the pandemic. Faulty medical equipment is being manufactured and sold in the country. Eyeing windfall gains in the current crisis, manufacturers are paying little attention to the quality of medical equipment. In the rush to meet the demand, safety cannot become a casualty.