In a shocking incident on Saturday, 10 patients died and six suffered serious burn injuries after a fire broke out in the COVID-19 ICU of Ahmednagar District hospital in Maharashtra. A total of 17 patients were admitted in the ICU.
Even as the exact cause of the fire remains to be known, a source from inside the hospital told THE WEEK that it was "most probably" the result of an AC compressor blast inside the ICU.
"I can tell with confidence that the ICU in our hospital is one of the best in terms of both manpower and infrastructure. However, there is no doubt that the maintenance of the infrastructure and facilities had always been an issue in the hospital and procedural delays and bureaucratic red tape has been the most common reason for this," said a hospital employee to THE WEEK.
"At the time of the fire there were 17 patients, two maushis (female helpers) and two nurses inside the ICU with only one exit. That is why it became difficult to rescue all the patients. Also, initially five patients died due to burns and the others died due to a lack of oxygen after they were rescued from the ICU but couldn't be provided oxygen via ventilators as the machines had conked off."
When THE WEEK tried contacting the hospital's civil surgeon Dr Sunil Pokharna, who is in charge of the administration, his office said that all due diligence was observed when it came to the maintenance of facilities inside the hospital. Pokharna, who was in a meeting with the central government, said he will communicate the "exact reasons for the fire once it is ascertained."
Earlier in the day, NCP leader Nawab Malik said: “It will be investigated if the fire audits were conducted or not. In case it was done, then how did the fire begin? In case a fire audit was not conducted, who is responsible? All of this will be investigated," he said. Home Minister Amit Shah, too, expressed condolences to the families of the deceased. “I pray to God for the speedy recovery of the injured,” he tweeted.
Ahmednagar has been in the news since the beginning of the pandemic for the high number of daily COVID-19 cases reported and most of the patient load was borne by the Civil hospital. As per statistics available with the state, during the second wave, Ahmednagar's active cases were about five times more than the cumulative active cases of other four districts of the region such as Nasik, Dhule, Jalgaon and Nandurbar.
In May this year, close to 10,000 minors had tested positive for the novel coronavirus at Ahmednagar but the district administration at the time, led by Bhosale had claimed that around 95 per cent of the minors were asymptomatic and that the situation was not "alarming" enough.
Then, in the month of July within a span of 15 days, the district reported 800 cases of COVID-19 and its positivity rate had risen to 15 per cent. Barely a month ago towards the end of September, the district had a COVID-19 positivity rate of 5.3 per cent over a seven-day period, which was the highest in the entire state of Maharashtra.
