It was a tale of two different cities, two different hospitals, but a similar tragedy on the same day. At both the hospitals, life-saving equipment had turned into death traps. At the Ahmedabad municipal hospital, initial reports said the warmer in which premature babies or those suffering from neonatal jaundice had been kept, had caught fire, due to a suspected short-circuit. Two were saved, but one died. At the Delhi-government run hospital too, the incubator had caught fire, also said to be due to short-circuit, killing the infant inside.

Investigations are still on into the incidents, but the tragic accidents highlight the apathy of the hospitals to the safety of patients. It was bad enough that there was short-circuiting of the equipment — an indication of either faulty equipment or electrical wiring. But what was worse was the lack of preparedness to deal with an emergency such as this. How can hospitals be allowed to run without some basic fire safety features? What if the fire had spread to the entire hospital or if there was fire in some other part of the hospital? How would the hospital have contained the fire or evacuated the patients?

The tragedies at the two hospitals also highlight the absence of safety consciousness in those monitoring the children at intensive care units.

In fact this reminds me of another tragic incident in 2003 at a civil hospital in Meghalaya, where another infant had died because of such negligence. In this case, a child, which was kept on a make-shift warmer — a metallic tray with a room heater below — had suffered excessive burn injuries and died.

Hospitals must realise that they have a duty to the patients to take due care. Failure to do so constitutes negligence. In fact only last year, in a case of incubator accident involving twin infants — in a private hospital in Ludhiana, Punjab — the apex consumer court had held the hospital guilty of negligence and ordered compensation. In this case the newborn babies had been kept in an incubator to treat neonatal jaundice. For some reason, the temperature in the incubator suddenly shot up, causing severe burn injuries to the twins. They were subsequently shifted to a larger hospital, but the injuries were so severe that the children developed septicaemia and gangrene and eventually lost their fingers (Saran Hospital and Nursing Home and others vs Palwinder Singh, FA No. 226 of 2002).

If only hospitals took safety issues more seriously, tragic accidents such as these can be avoided.