NCPCR: Prima facie, authorities’ negligence led to fire at facility

New Delhi: Based on its team’s spot visit to the site of the horrific fire incident at Baby Care New Born Hospital in Vivek Vihar, apex child rights body NCPCR has observed that “prima-facie it seems that the incident occurred due to the negligence of the concerned authority”. The commission has claimed severe violations ranging from lack of an emergency exit to absence of fire extinguishers, dysfunctional fire alarms and water sprinkling systems. NCPCR chairperson Priyank Kanoongo in a letter to Delhi chief secretary Naresh Kumar and police commissioner Sanjay Arora has shared the findings, made recommendations for action against the authorities responsible which includes the state health services department, fire department, municipal authorities, district administration and the state medical council. An action taken report has been sought within five days. The commission had taken suo motu cognisance of reports regarding death of six new borns in a fire in NICU in a private nursing home and sent out a team from the commission led by member Preeti Bharadwaj Dalal to the incident site on Sunday. “The commission during its visit to the incident has observed that there was no emergency exit in the nursing home which is a serious violation of the National Building Code. It was also observed that no fire extinguishers, emergency fire alarm were working and even no automatic water sprinkling system was functional. This again is a violation of fire and life safety norms under the National Building Code and the guidelines of the National Disaster Management Authority,” Kanoongo highlighted. He observed with concern that NCPCR team was informed that at the time of fire incident, locals of the area reported the incident rather than the hospital staff. “It seems that the staff of the nursing home was not trained in handling such emergency situations,” he added. Kanoongo claimed that even though the NCPCR team sought essential documents from the authorities they have not recieved copies of the ‘No Objection Certificate’ (NOC) from fire department, licence and registration of the nursing home, list of staff, sanctioned capacity of NICU beds/incubators, FIR, postmortem report and copy of licence to refill oxygen cyclinders. “The team from NCPCR met the families of the deceased infants and the families of surviving infants also. It was observed that one of the major issues faced by few families of the surviving and deceased infants is the issue of identificaton and their claim over one surviving child,” he shared with much concern and sought that govt take measures to ensure that the “issue of parentage of deceased and survived infants should be resolved”.