The devastating fire at Baby Care New Born Hospital in Vivek Vihar, Delhi, which killed 8 newborns, is not an isolated incident

On the night of May 26, a devastating fire broke out at Baby Care New Born Hospital, a private neonatal care home in East Delhi’s Vivek Vihar, killing eight newborns. However, infants who survived the fire are being closely monitored. According to the nursing home cell (a unit of the Directorate General of Health Services, Government of Delhi), the hospital’s registration had expired on March 31 and had not been renewed. Moreover, the hospital could only admit five patients, but that night it admitted 12 children.

The fire, which reportedly started at the front of a building where oxygen cylinders were stored, engulfed a small nursing home and spread to buildings on both sides of it. When the fire broke out, Rohit Sharma, a guard from IndusInd Bank adjacent to the hospital, was on duty. He said Front line“When I noticed it, it was a little spark that started on the top floor. In a matter of moments, it engulfed the entire building. The windows of banks were broken.

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Amidst the chaos, neighbors took a leading role in rescuing children from the back of the building. Roshan Lal, in his fifties, and his wife jumped into action. “We saw a nurse running out the back door,” Lal recalled. “She admitted that there were 12 children inside and insisted that we save them. All the staff disappeared. If they had stayed, each of them could have saved at least one child.” Local residents managed to rescue some of the infants from the back of the building by using ladders and destroying sections of the building. Local people took the children from the accident site to the nearest nursing home.

Ramji Bhardwaj, attending physician at East Delhi Advance NICU where the rescued babies were taken, said, “The moment we came to know that the fire had broken out, we started preparing for the situation. At 11:45 p.m., babies began to be born. Within half an hour we had all 12 children in our care.” Six infants were brought in dead, and another died shortly thereafter. “The children suffered from hyperthermia and loss of consciousness from the coal,” Dr. Bhardwaj explained. The five surviving infants were rushed to a government hospital later in the night as many people gathered to identify the children.

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The alleged delay in the arrival of the fire brigade, almost an hour after the fire broke out, added to the misery. According to Lal, only after the explosions stopped did the fire brigade begin to extinguish the fire in the building.

Meanwhile, the National Commission for the Protection of Child Rights received suo-motu information about the incident. An investigation found that the nursing home had no emergency exit, a serious violation of India’s National Building Code 2016. It had no fire extinguishers or working automatic sprinkler systems, a violation of National Disaster Management Authority guidelines. An initial investigation by the police and fire brigade found that the hospital did not have a fire permit.

Divisional commissioner Ashwani Kumar has directed the district magistrate of Shahdara district to investigate the fire tragedy. According to agency reports, the Delhi government has issued instructions to all private and government hospitals to conduct fire audit and submit compliance report by June 8.

Vedaant Lakhera and Vitasta Kaul interned at Frontline in May 2024.