By Staff Reporter
ISLAMABAD: A committee appointed by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif began investigating on Thursday what caused a fire to tear through a hospital nursery here, killing 14 newborns and leaving a nation searching for someone to blame.
The blaze broke out just before dawn Wednesday in the neonatal unit on the third floor of the Mother and Child Health Centre at the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences, known as PIMS, the country’s largest public hospital. Of the 15 infants in the nursery at the time, only one survived.
By Thursday afternoon, the tragedy had reordered the upper ranks of Pakistan’s health bureaucracy, drawn condemnation from opposition parties, prompted formal motions in both houses of parliament, and pulled in condolences from more than a dozen foreign governments and the United Nations. It had also, by Thursday evening, produced no definitive answer to the central question: what actually started the fire.
An official removed, a hospital in crisis
Sharif convened an emergency meeting on Wednesday and, in front of assembled officials, removed Health Secretary Aslam Ghauri from his post and directed him to leave the room, according to a statement from the Prime Minister’s Office. Sharif also offered condolences to the families of the dead infants.
In Ghauri’s place, the prime minister installed Capt. (retd.) Muhammad Mahmood, who by Thursday had set up a folding-table office on the hospital’s front lawn — a deliberate, visible choice, he told reporters, meant to signal that the ministry’s attention would now be trained directly on PIMS.
“I am new and do not understand the health sector, but my job is administration, and I can do it,” Mahmood said. “There are good and bad people in the hospital, and they will give me suggestions. I have decided to sit in PIMS so that I can understand the problems.”
He said he intended to spend roughly half an hour each day at the ministry’s main office before returning to the hospital, where he planned to hear directly from patients, family members and staff. Asked how he could run a federal ministry from a hospital lawn, Mahmood said modern technology made it possible, adding that he would leave only for meetings chaired by the prime minister before returning to PIMS.
What investigators know — and don’t
The fire began around 6:38 a.m. Wednesday. According to PIMS’ preliminary account, a spark inside the nursery ignited a blaze that spread with unusual speed because of oxygen lines feeding incubators in the room. Two doctors and two nurses on duty that morning alerted security and made two attempts to reach the infants, hospital officials said, but a blast around 6:39 a.m. — followed by the ceiling’s collapse — cut off further rescue efforts.
One newborn was pulled from the nursery. Hospital officials said a female security guard stationed outside the unit to prevent unauthorised removal of infants was alerted by a nurse that fire had broken out; she rushed in, grabbed the baby nearest the door, and carried the child out. She and the nurse tried to go back for the others, officials said, but the explosion forced them out as smoke and flame overtook the room.
Four patients from an adjoining room and three mothers were also evacuated, along with 73 patients from the adjacent gynaecology ward. Staff used all 35 fire extinguishers on the premises in an effort to contain the blaze, according to the hospital.
What triggered the initial spark remains unresolved. Federal Health Minister Syed Mustafa Kamal said on Wednesday that an air-conditioning unit appeared to be the source, and that oxygen support for the newborns likely accelerated the fire’s spread. He said on Thursday that closed-circuit footage was under review and pledged that no findings would be withheld, adding that he had “offered himself for accountability” and that any staff found negligent would face consequences.
But the National Assembly’s Standing Committee on National Health Services, which visited PIMS separately on Thursday, said the picture was murkier than initial statements suggested. Committee chairman Dr. Mahesh Kumar Malani said neither staff testimony nor security footage had conclusively identified the spark’s source. The air conditioner initially blamed, he said, had reportedly been out of service for some time — raising questions about exposed wiring and oxygen supply lines that the committee said required technical examination.
“We suspect that there was a technical fault in the ward,” Malani told reporters after the visit.
Malani’s committee also asked why the neonatal nursery had been operating in an older building at all, when a newer and better-equipped block existed on the same campus. The panel requested hospital records on fire drills, alarm systems, electrical and fire-safety audits, oxygen system inspections, and how the maternal-child health center’s budget had been spent.
A formal inquiry, a five-day clock
The prime minister’s fact-finding committee, led by retired federal secretary Shahid Khan, toured the damaged nursery Thursday and requested records from hospital administrators and other authorities. Its membership includes retired Maj. Gen. Dr. Khurshid Utra, Dr. Barrister Nabeel Ahmed Awan, and the Islamabad deputy commissioner.
The panel has been directed to determine the fire’s cause and timeline, evaluate the hospital’s safety and evacuation procedures, assess how staff and emergency responders reacted, assign responsibility, and recommend reforms. It has been given 48 hours to deliver preliminary recommendations and five days for a full report.
Separately, a petition was filed Thursday with the Islamabad High Court seeking a judicial commission — led by a sitting or sessions-court judge, rather than executive-branch appointees — to investigate the fire. The petition, filed by advocate Qasim Iqbal Jalali, argued that no institution should be permitted to investigate itself, and asked the court to order a full forensic examination of the fire and an audit of the hospital’s alarm systems. The federal government, the interior and health secretaries, Islamabad’s chief commissioner and its police chief were named as respondents.
Identification, and a clarification
Amid public fears that DNA testing might be required to identify the infants, PIMS Executive Director Dr. Rana Imran Sikandar said Thursday that would not be necessary. All 14 newborns were identified through intact wrist tags, he said, and released to their parents according to hospital records. The infants, he said, died of soot inhalation and injuries sustained in the fire, rather than being burned beyond recognition.
Political fallout
Kamal has so far resisted calls from opposition lawmakers and members of the parliamentary health committee to resign. Those calls have come from multiple directions. Pakistan Peoples Party lawmaker Dr. Shazia Sobia Aslam Soomro and JUI-F’s Aliya Kamran both called for his resignation on moral grounds on Thursday, along with the removal of PIMS’ executive leadership and disciplinary action against any staff found negligent.
Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf went further. At a press conference, party leaders Ali Muhammad Khan, Babar Awan and Shoaib Shaheen rejected the government’s fact-finding committee outright, calling the deaths a product of “criminal negligence” and institutional failure at the country’s flagship public hospital.
Khan said the inquiry needed to establish plainly whether the fire was an accident or the result of negligence, and questioned how newborns could have been left so vulnerable inside a major hospital. Awan called for compensation of 100 million rupees per family and argued that cosmetic administrative changes would not address what he described as deeper governance failures. Shaheen dismissed the value of another fact-finding panel, saying such bodies had historically slowed accountability rather than delivered it, and demanded the removal of PIMS’ management, the resignations of the health minister and the prime minister, and preservation of all relevant records.
In parliament, the Pakistan Peoples Party pressed the issue in both chambers. In the Senate, Vice President Sherry Rehman filed an adjournment motion seeking a dedicated debate on the fire, calling the breakdown in safety protocols at the country’s central government hospital “unacceptable.” In the National Assembly, PPP lawmaker Sehar Kamran filed a Calling Attention Notice, co-signed by MNAs Shazia Marri, Shahida Rehmani, Agha Rafiullah and Mirza Ikhtiar Baig, pressing the health ministry to explain both the circumstances of the deaths and what it intends to do about hospital safety going forward.
Rehman and PPP Secretary General Syed Nayyar Hussain Bukhari also visited PIMS in person. Rehman alleged that emergency exits had been closed, fire equipment was not functioning, and medical staff were unavailable at critical moments — a combination she again described as “criminal negligence.” She said some families had initially been unable to identify their children and had not received adequate support from the hospital, and argued that the federal Health Ministry’s role should either be devolved to the provinces or substantially overhauled.
President Asif Ali Zardari issued a statement calling the deaths “heartbreaking” and an “irreparable tragedy,” offering condolences to the families involved.
A hospital scrambling to adapt
With the nursery destroyed, PIMS has begun referring serious gynaecological cases to nearby hospitals, including Rawalpindi’s Polyclinic. Seven gynaecological patients and one child were transferred Thursday to Holy Family Hospital. A senior gynaecologist at PIMS, who was not authorised to speak publicly, said the hospital maintains a no-refusal policy for incoming patients, but that damage to the nursery made referring the most serious cases unavoidable for now — even as the hospital tries to avoid overwhelming other facilities by referring too much of its caseload at once.
Holy Family’s medical superintendent, Dr. Ijaz Butt, said the hospital had set up a dedicated ward and assigned additional staff to coordinate incoming PIMS patients, and noted the hospital’s fire-safety systems had been tested in a mock drill on Aug. 24, days before the PIMS fire. He said the city’s water utility, WASA, would install hydrants at six points on the hospital grounds — a gap he said had existed previously.
Benazir Bhutto Hospital said it had not yet received any transferred patients but had established a dedicated intake desk and reached out to PIMS’ gynaecology and paediatrics departments to offer help. Its medical superintendent, Dr. Sharjeel Sheikh, said the hospital’s fire equipment had been checked and found functional, and that its own safety drill was held Aug. 8.
The government’s response
The federal government announced on Thursday it would provide 5 million rupees in compensation to each family that lost a child in the fire, saying in a statement that it stood with the families in their grief and that no payment could replace a human life.
Records reviewed by legislators reportedly show that Pakistan’s Capital Development Authority had flagged safety deficiencies at PIMS repeatedly over the past decade — a history that has intensified scrutiny of how the hospital handled fire prevention in the years leading up to Wednesday’s fire.
Condolences from abroad
The fire drew a wave of condolence statements from foreign governments and international organisations. The British High Commission, the French and German embassies, and the embassies of China, Russia, Iran, Turkey, Ukraine and Afghanistan all issued messages of sympathy over the course of Thursday, as did Canada’s high commissioner, Tariq Osman. Saudi Arabia’s foreign ministry extended condolences to Pakistan’s government and people, and Syria’s foreign ministry expressed solidarity with the country. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha and Polish Foreign Minister Elina Valtonen both issued personal statements of condolence, as did Estonia’s foreign ministry.
The Muslim World League and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation’s science and technology body, COMSTECH, also issued statements mourning the deaths.
At the United Nations, spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric called the fire a “tragic accident” that had compounded what he described as unimaginable pain for the parents involved, and said the UN’s team in Islamabad stood ready to assist the Pakistani government. UNICEF’s representative in Pakistan, Pernille Ironside, said every newborn deserved a safe start to life and called for an urgent review of fire-prevention standards across the country’s health facilities. The World Health Organization’s representative in Pakistan, Dr. Luo Dapeng, also extended condolences to the affected families.
Copyright © 2021 Independent Pakistan | All rights reserved
