Three staff at an Indian hospital have been suspended after a deadly blaze in the intensive care unit, authorities said on Tuesday, as the toll from the disaster rose to 23.
Fire broke out on Monday night in the dialysis ward of the hospital in eastern Odisha state before quickly spreading to other floors, killing 19 seriously ill patients who were unable to flee the blaze.
Another patient died in hospital on Tuesday after being rescued from the burning building, said police inspector Sharat Kumar Sahu.
india's federal health minister J.P. Nadda disclosed the death toll from the fire at the Sum Hospital in the city of Bhubaneswar in an interview with the Times Now TV news station. “We can also confirm that three mid-level hospital staff have been suspended prima facie (for) negligence.”
About 40 critically ill patients were in the ICU of the SUM hospital in state capital Bhubaneswar when the fire broke out.
In all more than 100 were rescued by firefighters who smashed windows to get them out of the burning building.
“Some patients were evacuated by breaking a window on the first floor and then they were lowered to the ground floor. And some of them were evacuated through the adjoining operation theater which was empty at that time,” said Odisha’s health secretary Arti Ahuja.
“There are about 106 people who are (now) in different private and government hospitals,” she told the NDTV news channel.
In a separate incident, two people died early on Tuesday morning when a high-rise luxury apartment block in the western city of Mumbai caught fire.
Firefighters said 11 people had to be rescued from the blaze and two died of asphyxiation after they became trapped in the stairwell. The cause of the fire was not immediately clear.
Such disasters are relatively common in India, partly because of poor safety standards. The state’s chief minister Naveen Patnaik said on Tuesday that he had visited the evacuated patients in hospital and ordered an inquiry into what he called a “tragic incident.”
A government relief fund would bear the cost of their treatment, he said on Twitter.

Source: Arab News