New Delhi: Dozens of patients die every year in hospital fires caused by factors such as short circuit or flammable chemicals. These incidents are more common during the summers.
To prevent such incidents, Union health secretary Punya Salila Srivastava on Tuesday held a meeting with top health officials of states and UTs, and discussed issues like fire prevention in high-risk areas of healthcare facilities, emergency evacuation and patient safety strategies.
Srivastava stressed on the importance of ensuring fire and electrical safety in all health facilities, while highlighting the need for fire safety planning, capacity building of healthcare functionaries, and regular mock drills on fire preparedness and patient evacuation. The health secretary also highlighted the need to develop a culture of safety at health facilities.
Seeking active involvement of all states and UTs, the health ministry has circulated a detailed checklist, while asking them to direct health facilities, both public and private, to undertake fire and electrical safety audits.
Last year also, the Centre had issued directions to states to carry out a comprehensive fire safety audit and on-site inspections of all hospitals ahead of the summer season. In a joint advisory issued to state health departments and state disaster management authorities, the ministry and the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) had said fire-fighting systems, including fire alarms, fire smoke detectors, fire extinguishers, fire hydrants, and fire lifts shouldn’t just be present but they should be fully functional.
An analysis of failures leading to fire accidents in hospitals in India since 2010, which was published recently in the Journal of Failure Analysis and Prevention (JFAP), found that short circuit contributed to 89% of such incidents.
Flammable chemicals were the next biggest trigger, causing 4% of the accidents while in many other cases the exact cause couldn’t be ascertained. “Fire can be especially dangerous when it occurs in hospitals because many patients in any typical hospital are not physically fit enough to quickly respond to emergency measures, especially evacuation calls,” the researchers said.
