Sharif suspends eight officials after PIMS fire that killed 14 newborns

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Saturday ordered the suspension of eight officials and the start of criminal proceedings after an interim inquiry into Wednesday's fire at the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences. Fourteen newborns died. One of the 15 babies in the third-floor nursery was taken out alive.

The meeting was held in Lahore. Committee members showed about two minutes of CCTV. The footage, the Prime Minister's Office said, showed the neonatal ward engulfed within two minutes. Emergency services were not called for six minutes. The first crew arrived 15 minutes after that call. Twenty-one minutes passed between ignition and a professional response.

Sharif's line, released by his office, was blunt. "Those guilty of criminal negligence do not deserve any leniency. Those responsible for this incident will be brought to justice."

Who was named

The eight officials listed by the PMO are PIMS Executive Director Prof. Dr. Imran Sikandar; Joint Executive Directors Dr. Mutahir Shah and Dr. Owais Ali Shah; neonatal department head Prof. Dr. Sadia Riaz; Senior Registrar Dr. Nagham (also rendered Naghma in local reports); Dr. Nausheela Amjad; PIMS Assistant Director Security Muhammad Usman; and Capital Development Authority Emergency Services Director General Dr. Abdul Rehman.

Sharif also approved action against the private security company posted at PIMS and its officials. A nurse and a female security guard who were in the ward were made officers on special duty pending further inquiry. The interim report said supervisory staff were not on duty when the fire began.

Sikandar had refused to resign in the days after the fire. A health ministry official told Arab News on Saturday morning, before the Lahore meeting, that removal was "on the cards." By evening the suspension list carried his name at the top.

What the inquiry found

The committee was headed by retired senior civil servant Shahid Khan. Its interim report, according to the PMO, found that PIMS had no detailed procedures or training for fires and other emergencies. The neonatal ward had neither fire alarms nor sprinklers. The ward was operating in violation of World Health Organization safety rules cited by the committee.

BBC Urdu, in the hours after the fire, reported that the blaze began in an air-conditioning unit and was fed by oxygen connections. That mechanism fits the speed on the CCTV. A nursery running oxygen, without sprinklers or an alarm, does not give staff a margin.

Staff rescued one infant from 15. The government has already announced compensation of 5 million rupees, about $18,000, for each bereaved family.

The hospital

PIMS opened in 1985 as Islamabad's main public tertiary hospital. The Islamabad Hospital block has 592 beds. The Children's Hospital has 230. The Maternal and Child Health Care Centre, where Wednesday's fire started, has 125. It is the referral hospital for the capital, northern Punjab, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Azad Kashmir.

CDA emergency services sit under the same capital administration that runs large parts of the city's civic machinery. That is why the CDA emergency director general is on the suspension list alongside hospital doctors. The first-response delay is now a documented fact in the PMO statement, not a rumour from the gate.

What happens next

Sharif ordered both departmental and criminal proceedings, "without discrimination." The inquiry remains interim. A fuller file will have to assign cause, sequence and individual duty. Families gathered outside the Mother and Child Health ward in the days after the fire. Candle vigils were photographed on Thursday.

Pakistan's public hospitals have a long record of electrical fires and oxygen-fed blazes. This one is different in scale and in the age of the dead. Fourteen newborns in one ward, in the capital's flagship hospital, with alarms missing and a 21-minute gap before help arrived, is the fact pattern the courts will now be asked to try.

The eight names are suspended. The security contractor is under notice. The compensation figure is public. The CCTV clip has been seen in the prime minister's meeting room. The legal file is the next document.