How safe are hospitals in metro cities?

New Delhi: The Kolkata’s AMRI hospital tragedy has raised serious questions about the safety of other hospitals across the metros. CNN-IBN decided to do a status check of the medical institutes in the major metros and what they found was certainly not very encouraging.

In Delhi, they found most of the major private hospitals were complying with the latest fire safety norms but the government hospitals are lagging behind. Three of Delhi's top hospitals, Guru Teg Bahadur hospital, Deen Dayal hospital and AIIMS do not have adequate safety norms, AIIMS though claims to have upgraded its safety features.

Documents show that there were four separate fires in AIIMS in the last 6 months. The hospital has been lucky so far that these were minor fires, but the question remains till when AIIMS will continue to ride its luck on patient safety.

Documents revealed that on August 11, 2011 there was a fire in waste material and four air Conditioners. On September 21, 2011 there was a fire in sanitary napkins, pads and packing material. On July 18, 2011, a fire broke in the basement where chemical bottles were kept and on October 3, 2011 there was a fire outside AIIMS trauma centre.

Director Delhi Fire Service AK Khanna said, "The old buildings need to update the wiring and instrument to deter such incidences."

In Banglore too the private sector seems to doing much better as many of the hospital have obtained a NoC certificates.

Sources from fire department tell us that most of the government hospitals of Bangalore do not have adequate safety measures to combat an incident like the one in Kolkata's AMRI.

In Chennai a number of AMRI-like violations have been noticed with the basement often used as a consultation ward or sometimes even an ICU. An RTI has revealed that Kilpauk Medical college which saw a fire mishap last July is still not fire-safe. Authorities say only about 50 per cent of the hospitals in Tamil Nadu follow fire safety norms.

The situation is better in Mumbai, after notices were issued to some hospitals; they had complied with fire safety norms. No major violations have been noticed in Mumbai since then.

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