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By:

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.

Monsoon Malaise

Updated: Oct 21, 2024

Few things are as predictable as Mumbai’s monsoon: torrential rains, clogged roads, submerged railway tracks, harried commuters. Year after year, Mumbai, Pune and other parts in Maharashtra face a familiar deluge of water - and a deluge of excuses. As the India Meteorological Department (IMD) issues warnings, the state’s infrastructure wilts under pressure, unable to cope with the annual onslaught. The problem is not the accuracy or inaccuracy of these forecasts (often the butt of jokes), but the chronic inadequacy of the state’s infrastructure.

Despite Maharashtra being one of India’s wealthiest states, its urban planning and preparedness for heavy rains remain woefully inadequate. Mumbai, the financial capital, is an emblem of this paradox. The city’s drainage system, much of it built during the British era, is designed to handle 25mm of rain per hour. This might have sufficed in 1860, but it is pitifully inadequate for the reality of the 2020s, where storms can dump more than 100mm of rain in just a few hours.

In Pune, rapid urbanization has outstripped its drainage systems, causing flash floods during the monsoon. Once known for its pleasant weather, the city now faces severe waterlogging with any heavy rain, worsened by roads that quickly morph into lunar craters at the first instance of heavy showers.

A critical flaw in Maharashtra’s monsoon preparedness lies not just in infrastructure but in communication. While the state government leans heavily on IMD forecasts, it rarely takes proactive steps to directly inform the public about impending torrential rains. The reliance on the IMD’s bulletins alone - often buried in technical jargon - leaves citizens unaware of real-time conditions and disruptions.

This communication gap has dire consequences. Commuters in Mumbai, dependent on the city’s overstretched public transport system, often find themselves stranded as trains are cancelled, buses are rerouted, and streets turn into rivers.

The city’s famed suburban rail network grinds to a halt, leaving thousands scrambling for alternative routes with little advance notice.Instead of waiting for IMD alerts, the Maharashtra administration could adopt a more dynamic, real-time communication system using apps, SMS alerts, and social media to keep commuters informed of road closures, train delays, and areas to avoid.

A centralized, citizen-centric system, akin to those used in other flood-prone cities globally, could alleviate much of the chaos that grips Mumbai during the monsoon, helping people adjust their plans before the city is submerged.

Without a strategic overhaul of its urban infrastructure, the state will remain trapped in a vicious cycle of monsoon mismanagement. Maharashtra cannot control the skies, but it can control how prepared it is to face the rains that fall from them.

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