Deadly negligence

Hospital fire underlines criminal regulatory failure

A hospital fire in east Delhi, resulting in the death of seven new-born babies, is yet another deeply tragic reminder of the systemic abdication of responsibilities by regulatory authorities. In the aftermath of this heart-breaking catastrophe, caused by exploding oxygen cylinders, it transpires that nothing about this hospital was legal. Investigation has revealed that the hospital’s licence had expired two months ago, it did not have trained medical personnel, a fire-safety certificate, basic fire-safety equipment, or usable fire exits. The survival of five of the 12 infants was due to quick-thinking improvisation by firefighters, who used a ladder from a neighbouring building to climb through a window at the rear of the facility to reach the infants. Subsequent investigation revealed that owners of the hospital had three branches in the National Capital Region. The criminal rule book has been thrown at the owners now, but this does not detract from the fact that the disaster has highlighted the combination of rank corruption and negligence that increasingly characterises public services in India. According to The Times of India, Delhi has reported 66 hospital fires over the past two years, suggesting that fire regulations are observed in the breach.

If this is the state of hospitals in Delhi, the situation elsewhere can only be imagined. In 2011, for instance, a fire broke out in an upscale hospital in south Kolkata, resulting in the death of more than 60 people, the bulk of them patients in the intensive care unit. Medical waste and chemicals stored in the basement had caused the fire. Those who died could not be evacuated down stairways, which were too narrow to accommodate stretchers, pointing to obvious shortcomings in the fire-inspection processes. In a country where government investment in health care is wholly inadequate, as the Delta phase of the pandemic revealed just three years ago, the private sector is visibly filling the gap. This forced and growing reliance on private hospitals, clinics, and related facilities, therefore, demands robust, efficient, and trustworthy regulatory systems, ensuring minimum safety standards — from building codes to the quality of medicare.

The irony is that strict rules and regulations exist in the statute books in almost every state. The fact that they are often bypassed with impunity, as this latest tragedy has demonstrated, is an issue that should command the attention of all administrations. Penalising errant officials after the fact has limited deterrent effect; working at establishing a robust regulatory environment as a standard operating procedure is the hard work that political leaders urgently need to undertake. These basic values play as critical a role in determining a nation’s success as lofty goals such as  massive infrastructure spending and ease of doing business metrics. Such reprehensible developments as the deaths of Gambian (in Africa) and Uzbek (in Central Asia) children ingesting contaminated cough syrup made in India or reports of impurities in eye drops causing blindness in the US, or the presence of toxins in spices exported by reputed companies are damaging to the country’s reputation as a reliable place to do business. This message has just been underlined at the cost of human lives.