Nagpur: The prominent government most of the private healthcare and institutions in Nagpur are far behind when it comes to implementing fire safety norms set by Fire Department. All of them have issued a notice by the department seeking implementation fire safety measures. These include prominent Government Medical College and Hospital (GMCH), Mayo, Daga, ESIC hospitals along with few private hospitals.
It’s been barely a week since a fire broke out at the ESIC Kamgar Hospital at Marol in suburban Andheri in Mumbai which claimed 8 lives including a two-month-old baby and injuring 145 patients and visitors, as there was only one exit and the other was blocked due to some construction work. Moreover the glass facade and limited ventilation posed severe challenges to the fire fighting team.
However it seems that the medical institutions in the city have not learnt any lessons. NMC’s Fire Department has recently conducted a fire audit of GMC, Mayo, Daga and ESIC hospitals in the city and all of them are found to be lacking fire safety norms.
It is likely to mentioned that Fire Department had already issued an order against ESIC hospital in the city of snapping electric and water supply for not acting accordingly and also issued letters to Mayo and Government Medical College and Hospital (GMCH) giving them ultimatum before issuing the similar notice.
In the year 2018, the Fire Department conducted inspection at total of 217 medical institutions in the city where 88 were found to be adhering to the norms, while 54 were directed to modify their constructions.
Fire department issued notice to total 36 healthcare centers that were violating section 8.2 of fire safety and 26 were found of violating section 5.
Total 38 institutions were served a water and power snapping notice, where Fire department directed 10 healthcares to shut down their institution and initiated action to cancel their licences.
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