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Correspondent

23 August 2024 at 9:59:04 pm

Fatal Negligence

Newborns dying in a fire inside a government hospital is a devastating indictment of a system that is supposed to protect its most vulnerable patients. The Amravati District Women’s Hospital tragedy, where a blaze killed three infants, joins a long list of preventable institutional failures. Thirty-nine babies were inside the three-compartment facility when the fire erupted after a ventilator in the neonatal unit caught fire. Thirty-six were eventually rescued. Parents and eyewitnesses have...

Fatal Negligence

Newborns dying in a fire inside a government hospital is a devastating indictment of a system that is supposed to protect its most vulnerable patients. The Amravati District Women’s Hospital tragedy, where a blaze killed three infants, joins a long list of preventable institutional failures. Thirty-nine babies were inside the three-compartment facility when the fire erupted after a ventilator in the neonatal unit caught fire. Thirty-six were eventually rescued. Parents and eyewitnesses have alleged that the fire alarms did not sound and the automatic sprinklers failed to activate even as the district administration has said the hospital underwent regular fire audits and had applied for this year’s audit. An audit is meaningful only if it establishes that equipment works when lives depend on it. Maharashtra has already witnessed the deadly consequences of fire-safety failures in public hospitals. In 2021, eleven Covid-19 patients died in a fire at the Ahmednagar district hospital even though a fire audit conducted months earlier had recommended a firefighting system. The Amravati tragedy demands more than the familiar ritual of a high-level inquiry, compensation and promises of “strictest action”. The announcement of ex gratia payments cannot compensate parents who have lost a child they had barely begun to know. The investigation must establish not merely what ignited the fire, but why it was allowed to become fatal. Was the ventilator properly maintained? Were electrical and medical devices routinely inspected? Did alarms function? Were sprinklers operational? Was the NICU appropriately located and equipped for evacuation? Were staff trained and drills conducted? And most importantly, who was responsible for ensuring that every safeguard worked? There is another troubling detail: the neonatal unit was reportedly housed on the third floor, rather than at ground level, and questions have arisen over whether the unit was part of the building’s original plan. The state has built an elaborate architecture of laws and child-protection standards which seldom matches the situation on ground. Whether in government hospitals, schools or anganwadis, safety has become a box to be ticked rather than a responsibility to be lived. The most vulnerable children are consequently left dependent not on systems, but on the vigilance and heroism of individual staff members. That is an appalling way to run the childcare infrastructure of one India’s most developed states. A NICU is perhaps the worst possible place for institutional complacency: its patients are immobile, medically dependent and extraordinarily vulnerable to smoke, heat and even brief disruption of life-support equipment. The government must ensure that the Amravati deaths do not become another entry in the grim ledger of hospital tragedies followed by inquiries, outrage and forgetting. The real test will be whether the state can prevent the next newborn from dying in a hospital that was supposed to save him.

IB officer wanted to take parents to Vaishno Devi

  • PTI
  • Apr 24, 2025
  • 2 min read

Ranchi: Intelligence Bureau (IB) officer Manish Ranjan, who was killed in the terror attack in Jammu and Kashmir's Pahalgam, had planned to take his parents to the Vaishno Devi shrine after returning from this vacation, one of his friends recounted.


Sanjeev Kumar Gupta, who was at the Ranchi airport on Thursday morning to receive Ranjan's mortal remains, said he was a meritorious student.


"His father recently retired as the headmaster of the Hindi High School in Jhalda. Ranjan had planned to take his parents to Vaishno Devi after this vacation," he said.


Ranjan, a section officer with the IB posted in Hyderabad, was among the 26 people killed in the terror attack on Tuesday.


"We had never thought such a gruesome incident would take place. People say terrorists have no religion, but innocent people were brutally killed because of their religion," said another friend, Aditya Sharma, who also came to the Ranchi airport to take his mortal remains to his native place in Jhalda in West Bengal's Purulia district.


Jharkhand BJP president Babulal Marandi was among the leaders and administrative officers who paid homage to Ranjan at the airport.


Marandi said the way innocent people were killed on the basis of their religion is not pardonable.


"The perpetrators of the crime will be brought to justice by the government. The masterminds of the attack will also not be spared," he said.


'Ranjan left for Kashmir with smile'

Ranchi/Jhalda: "I don't want to speak… please leave me alone," those were the only words Intelligence Bureau officer Manish Ranjan's father Manglesh Kumar Mishra could muster, his voice cracking under the weight of unspeakable loss.


A retired school headmaster from Jhalda in West Bengal's Purulia district, he stood trembling as the coffin of his 33-year-old son returned to his Jhalda home in West Bengal's Purulia district on Thursday afternoon.


Ranjan, a section officer with the IB posted in Hyderabad, was among the 26 people killed in the Pahalgam terror attack on Tuesday.

"Ranjan left for Kashmir with a smile. He would call us every day on the phone and WhatsApp to ask about our health. We even received his call on the fateful day," his father said. One of his friends recounted that after returning from this vacation, Ranjan had planned to take his parents to the Vaishno Devi shrine.


Sanjeev Kumar Gupta, who was at Ranchi airport on Thursday morning to receive Ranjan's mortal remains, said he was a meritorious student.

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