AT 6:45 Wednesday morning, a fire reportedly began after an air-conditioning compressor exploded in the nursery of PIMS Hospital in Islamabad. Sixteen newborns were in that room. Fifteen would never leave it alive. One was carried out by a doctor who happened to be present. Parents waiting outside were told that their children, some in incubators, some on oxygen and some only hours old, had died in the fire. These were babies utterly dependent on the adults and systems meant to keep them alive. The Prime Minister called the loss irreparable and ordered an investigation. An inquiry committee was formed. The cameras arrived and somewhere in the administrative machinery of the state, another report is being written, one that may explain how this happened long after the country has stopped asking who should have prevented it.
This is not the first time and not even a new warning. In June 2024, a fire triggered by an air-conditioning failure at Sahiwal Teaching Hospital killed eleven newborns. There were inquiries, promises and solemn assurances of accountability. Then the country moved on. Fifteen months later, the same horror returned at PIMS. Another nursery, another cooling-system failure. Another sixteen helpless infants trapped inside. How many dead babies does it take before a government stops calling negligence an accident? How many inquiries must be announced before someone is held responsible? The most horrifying part is not that these fires keep happening. It is that we keep behaving as though they are unexpected.
“Hospital fires are not uncommon in Pakistan”, CNN reported, citing outdated electrical systems in government hospitals. Those three words, ‘not uncommon’ should sear the national conscience. When deaths inside hospitals become predictable enough for the world to describe them as routine, the indictment is no longer of one building or one administration. It is of a system that has normalised preventable death. In functioning healthcare systems, a fire involving newborns would trigger immediate scrutiny and correction. In Pakistan, fifteen dead babies trigger a committee.
A newborn cannot run from flames. A premature infant on oxygen cannot detach itself from the equipment keeping it alive. In a neonatal ward, safety is not a luxury or a budgetary choice. It is the first duty of the state. Parents allege that no staff was present when the fire began. If true, who was watching babies who could not even cry for help? Where were the alarms, the evacuation plan and the trained staff who could have carried these infants to safety? When was the air-conditioning system last inspected and serviced? Were emergency exits accessible? Had staff practiced evacuating babies who could neither walk nor breathe without assistance? These were not questions for an inquiry after the fire. They were duties that had to be fulfilled before it. A hospital entrusted with the most helpless lives cannot plead surprise when safeguards meant to protect them fail. And when those safeguards are ignored, neglected or missing, the word ‘accident’ becomes a convenient way of avoiding responsibility.
And there is another question the country must confront. Why must the dead become evidence before the living are protected? Pakistan has no shortage of committees, reports or recommendations. What it lacks is the will to act before catastrophe forces action upon us. A warning is ignored, a fault is tolerated, a risk is normalised, and everyone moves on until the next siren sounds. That is how negligence becomes a system. In a neonatal ward, where a few seconds can separate life from death, every ignored warning carries a human cost. The tragedy is not only that these babies died. It is that many of the conditions that put them in danger may have been visible long before the fire began.
PIMS is not an obscure or poorly equipped rural facility. It is one of the principal public hospitals in the capital, serving citizens for whom public healthcare is often the only affordable option. When parents carry a newborn into such a hospital, they surrender the child to its care in the most complete sense possible. They cannot inspect the wiring, test the alarms, examine the fire extinguishers, or ensure that someone is watching over the nursery at dawn. They can only trust. That trust was shattered yesterday not merely for fifteen grieving families, but for an entire nation forced to witness its own systemic failure. The government must now order an immediate, independent safety audit of neonatal, maternity, paediatric and intensive care units in every major public hospital in Pakistan. Its findings must be made public within thirty days, with a named official responsible for correcting every identified deficiency and a deadline for compliance.
Fifteen newborns died before they had even learned what life was. They had no voice, no choice and no ability to escape. Their parents entrusted them to the one place where they believed they would be protected. Instead, fifteen tiny lives became another entry in Pakistan’s ledger of preventable deaths. No inquiry can return those children. No report can explain their absence to fifteen mothers waiting for a cry that will never come. When the same preventable failure is allowed to happen again after previous tragedies and warnings, it is no longer enough to call it negligence. A state that cannot protect its most helpless citizens has failed not only in governance, but in conscience. The only word left is shame.
—The writer is PhD in Political Science, and visiting faculty at QAU Islamabad.
