PM orders inquiry into PIMS fire safety failures

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has ordered an inquiry against senior officials of the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS) over their alleged failure to act on fire safety deficiencies at the Islamabad hospital, Dawn reported.

According to the report, a charge sheet in the case states that timely corrective measures could have prevented a fire in August in which 14 newborn babies died. Dawn's account refers to two incidents: a fire at the Female Nursing Hostel on 6 July, and the August fire in which the infants were killed.

The charge sheet alleges that although the PIMS administration had been put on notice about the 6 July hostel fire, deficiencies relating to what caused the fire, the evacuation of the building and the emergency response were never corrected, the newspaper reported.

PIMS is one of the capital's largest government hospitals. Dawn did not name the officials facing the inquiry or say which department or committee would conduct it. Neither PIMS nor the federal health ministry was quoted in the report, and the contents of the charge sheet could not be independently verified by Skardu Times. It was not immediately clear when the inquiry would begin or whether its findings would be made public.

The order places the hospital's senior management under scrutiny at a time when fire safety in the capital's public buildings is already in question. In a separate report, Dunya News said Islamabad's Sasta Bazaars had been closed for nearly a month because of a lack of fire safety arrangements.

The reports did not say whether the two matters were connected, or whether the closures followed any inspection of the markets by the capital's municipal authorities. No statement from the Islamabad administration on the bazaars was carried in the Dunya News report.

The charge sheet's focus on evacuation and emergency response points to questions about how prepared the hospital was to move patients, including newborns in its care, once a fire had started. Dawn's report did not say what changes, if any, have been made at the hospital since August.