Fourteen newborns die in Islamabad hospital fire; health secretary sacked

Fourteen newborn babies died on Wednesday morning, 26 August, in a fire at the mother and child unit of the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences in Islamabad. Fifteen infants were in the nursery. Hospital spokesperson Dr Aneeza Jalil told Dawn and the BBC that a doctor saved one child. Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif dismissed federal health secretary Aslam Ghauri the same day and ordered an inquiry.

The Islamabad district administration said the first emergency call came at 6:45 a.m. An air-conditioning unit in the third-floor nursery failed. Health Minister Mustafa Kamal told Geo News that many of the babies were in incubators or on oxygen and that the oxygen lines fed the fire. Six fire engines and four ambulances were sent. Tariq Fazal Chaudhry, a minister elected from Islamabad, said the blaze moved so fast that only one infant in that room could be taken out alive.

What parents described

Jaweria, whose child died, told AFP the maternity ward door was locked. “For two hours I kept crying and wailing,” she said. “Police arrived after four hours and said they are here to investigate.” Khurram Mehmood, 40, said his three-day-old daughter died and that families sat on the road waiting for help.

Bahadur Khan, a vegetable seller, had left his three-day-old twin daughters with their mother on Tuesday night so he could sleep at home. Both girls died. His wife was in intensive care on Wednesday and had not been told. “The officials responsible for this tragedy should be held accountable and punished,” he said outside the hospital.

Hivsa Walid was near the room with her sister-in-law, who had given birth days earlier. She told the BBC she grabbed a newborn and ran. Arif Rana, 46, had been sleeping on the lawn outside the maternity unit. A phone call woke him. He pulled his sister’s mother-in-law out through smoke that “made it hard to breathe.” His sister-in-law had already carried the new mother and her baby down the stairs.

Official timeline and the 24-hour report

District officials said fire tenders reached the hospital within seven minutes of the first call. Parents dispute that timing. The hospital administration first said the fire was brought under control at once and that children were shifted to intensive care. That sentence sat poorly beside a death count of 14 out of 15 in a single room.

Kamal said some of the babies were only three hours old. State minister for interior figures listed seven other babies, two men and ten mothers rescued from other parts of the building. The district magistrate formed a fact-finding committee and gave it 24 hours. Sharif also ordered a wider investigation.

PIMS opened in 1985 as the capital’s main tertiary hospital. The campus includes a 592-bed Islamabad Hospital, a 230-bed children’s hospital and a 125-bed maternal and child centre. The nursery that burned was supposed to be the safest room in that complex. Oxygen, incubators and a locked door turned it into a closed box.

The opposition treated the fire as a failure of basic public hospital safety. The government answered by firing Ghauri and promising a report within a day. The report will have to say whether the air-conditioner had been serviced, whether oxygen isolation valves worked, and why families say they could not open a door. Those three facts will matter more than the dismissal.