Investigators enter the PIMS nursery where 14 newborns died

Investigators appointed by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif walked through the third-floor nursery at the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences on Thursday, a day after a fire there killed 14 of the 15 newborns inside. The bodies had already been given to families overnight. Punjab ordered a separate check of fire systems in its hospitals.

The blaze started shortly before 7 a.m. on Wednesday in the Mother and Child Centre, the capital’s main public maternity unit. District officials first said an air-conditioning unit exploded. A later hospital note pointed to a nebuliser and said high oxygen in the room spread the fire in minutes. Health Minister Mustafa Kamal said many of the infants were in incubators or on oxygen. Oxygen itself does not burn; it makes everything else burn hotter.

Two doctors, two nurses and other staff got one baby out. Seven other infants, two men and ten mothers were taken from other parts of the building. Sharif dismissed Federal Health Secretary Aslam Ghauri within hours and ordered an inquiry. Families standing outside said the first engines were slow. The city administration said the first call came at 6.45 a.m. and that tenders arrived in seven minutes.

A public hospital that was supposed to be the safest room in the city

PIMS is Islamabad’s largest government hospital. The nursery was meant to be the most controlled room in it. Abdul Ghafoor Shoro of the doctors’ association called the deaths the product of administrative failure and weak regulation. Building fires are common in Pakistan. A nursery fire that leaves one survivor out of fifteen is not.

Among the dead were the three-day-old twin daughters of Bahadur Khan, a vegetable seller. His wife was in intensive care and had not been told. That is the scale of the file the Thursday committee is walking through: not a slogan about hospital safety, but a room, an oxygen line, and a cause that has already been stated two different ways.