Vizag hospitals lack fire safety gear

Visakhapatnam: The Friday evening fire mishap at Victoria General Hospital (Gosha Hospital) has once again sent a reminder to the authorities the need to have a fire safety audit in all the hospitals.

Pregnant women and mothers of nine new born babies had to run away from the hospital, before the authorities put two children in King George Hospital and seven others in a different floor of the hospital.

According to fire department sources, around 60 percent of private and government-run hospitals in the city, which are visited by over 10,000 people every day, do not have proper fire safety measures in place.

Lack of trained manpower and poor maintenance of the firefighting equipment are also some of the problems that put the most of the hospitals at risk.

The city has around 150 registered hospitals including government-run hospitals, but only 32 hospitals have obtained No Objection Certificate (NOC) from the fire prevention wing of Greater Visakhapatnam Municipal Corporation.

King George Hospital, the biggest government hospital in North Andhra having 1,000 bed capacity do not have proper fire fighting mechanism, said a senior officer of fire prevention wing of GVMC on condition of anonymity. After repeated notices, some hospitals have approached the GVMC to obtain NOC and some are yet to approach, he added.

Evacuation of patients is a major challenge in case of fire mishap in most of the hospitals as the management of the hospitals utterly failed to procure equipment. Shortage of trained hands in the hospitals to operate the fire-extinguishers is another problem the many hospitals are facing.

`We have fire equipment but nobody knows how to operate, ‘’ said a head nurse of a newly Corporate hospital in Health City.
Gates and doors are seen locked in government hospitals where the security claim it was part of crowd management.

Sources in fire department said that they have power to issue notices to hospitals but no power to seize the hospitals for ignoring the fire safety norms. The city has only three fire stations, established since 1942.