By Asif Chaudhry
LAHORE, Sept 14: Two patients of the Jinnah Hospital’s Intensive Care Unit (ICU) allegedly died of suffocation while six people, including a deputy medical superintendent (DMS), sustained minor injuries when the ICU was being evacuated after a fire broke out in it at around 12 midnight on Tuesday.
The same ICU was targeted by a group of terrorists a couple of months ago while another fire had erupted in it a couple of years ago.
Main kit of an air conditioning (AC) unit installed in the ICU had a short-circuiting that caused the fire and flames later engulfed the store room attached to the ICU.
The hospital chief executive and AIMC principal, Prof Dr Javed Akram, who also took part in rescue operation, said that no patient expired owing to fire and that the two patients who breathed their last had already been declared “highly critical” and their families had been informed about their deteriorating health a day ago.
Before evacuating patients from ICU to other departments, the on-duty doctor and staff nurses removed ventilators and put the patients on manual Ambu bags (resuscitators) to avoid any mishap during the process.
However, there was no doctor, staff nurse, paramedical staff or any technician to ventilate with these valve masks lungs of the patients when they were being shifted from ICU to other departments, which caused instant death of two patients, a senior medical officer told Dawn on the condition of anonymity.
He said though the staff nurses and other employees of the hospital made stringent efforts to rescue the ICU patients, no precautionary measures were adopted to save lives of the patients in the shifting process despite knowing that they had already been declared ‘highly critical’.
“Security guards, attendants and ward boys were accompanying these patients while they were being shifted to other facilities,” he said.
There were scores of other doctors discharging duties during night shift but none of them came to rescue the patients, he added.
Initially, DMS (security) Dr Kashif, staff nurses Sehrish, Nazia Noor, Iqra and Shamim, electricians Asim and Shabbir, sanitary inspector Muhammad Ajmal, security guards Rana Sadiq and Saddique Allah Yar and AIMC Principal Dr Javed Akram took part in the rescue work and tried to extinguish the fire but failed, another senior doctor said.
However, it took them 45 minutes to evacuate all the patients from ICU to other departments. The patients, who expired, were identified as 32-year-old Margaret Asif, of Sahiwal, and 60-year-old Talib Hussain, of Kotlakhpat, Lahore.
Hussain died in the ENT operating theatre where he was shifted from the ICU while Margaret breathed her last in the medical emergency department.
Both the patients had already been put on ventilators due to their deteriorating health.
Margaret had given birth to a baby in a Sahiwal hospital some days back and had been referred to Jinnah Hospital owing to her critical condition.
Staff nurse Nazia Noor, who also sustained minor injuries while taking part in the evacuation, told Dawn that fire broke out in the store room at 11:55pm due to short-circuiting in the main kit of AC installed near Bed No I of the ICU.
The flames later engulfed the attached record room littered with cotton, plastic sheets, bed sheets, linen, registers and patients’ record within a few minutes. The
billows of dense smoke engulfed the entire ICU.
She said that on her call, DMS Dr. Kashif, sanitary inspector, two electricians and security guards rushed to the ICU and began evacuating patients. They first tried to extinguish fire but failed and finally called the Rescue-1122 firefighters who reached within 15 minutes.
Eight patients were being treated in the ICU at the time of the incident, she said adding that six of them had been put on ventilators.
“I shifted two patients from ICU to other departments of the hospital,” Ms Noor added.
It was too hard to continue rescue work in ICU filled with dense smoke, she said and added that they (hospital staffers) managed to shift all the patients in less than 45 minutes after the fire broke out.
Dr Kashif told Dawn that dense smoke was causing hurdles in rescuing patients, so he broke the glass windowpanes with a blunt object.
He said the Rescue-1122 workers extinguished the fire by breaking the store room’s locked door.
The fire created panic among patients admitted to other departments of the hospital as well.
It is pertinent to mention here that at least five people, including a woman, were killed when four unidentified terrorists attacked the same ICU three months back.
A fire had also erupted in the same ICU two and a half years ago but no casualty was reported at that time.Prof Dr Javed Akram told Dawn that an initial inquiry report regarding the fire incident had been finalized and sent to the Punjab health department.
According to the inquiry report, he said, no patient died in the fire incident. The two patients, who breathed their last, had already been declared “highly critical” and their attendants had been conveyed about their deteriorating health a day before, he said.
Meanwhile, Punjab health secretary Fawad Hassan Fawad has formed a four-member committee to probe into the fire incident.
Health special secretary (development) Waseem Mukhtar will head the committee while Lahore health director Dr. Umar Farooq Baloch, communications and works department superintending engineer Akbar Ali and Jinnah Hospital’s bio-medical engineer Yasir Abbas Tareen are its members. The committee will submit its report within 72 hours.