THERE is a particular grief that settles over a country when the same headline repeats until it stops shocking anyone. Then one incident arrives that refuses to fade. This week it was Islamabad’s Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS), where a fire tore through the neonatal nursery. Fourteen newborns died. One baby was pulled out alive.
Parents who rushed to the ward say the NICU door was locked and staff was not there when the fire broke out. Officials have offered different explanations for the cause, including an air-conditioner compressor and an oxygen-related explosion. Whatever the technical explanation, the larger fact is harder to escape: newborns placed under constant medical supervision in one of the country’s largest public hospitals were not kept safe.
What happened afterwards was almost as disturbing. While the tragedy and the treatment of the affected families were being raised in front of him, the health minister responded to someone by pointing out that a baby’s incubator at PIMS had been provided free of charge. He went on to say that had the child’s father gone elsewhere, he could have died because the family could not have afforded the roughly Rs 20,000 cost. At a moment when families had just lost their newborns, the response sounded less like accountability and more like a reminder of what PIMS had supposedly done for them. But PIMS had done no personal favour. The incubator was not bought with the minister’s money. PIMS receives billions of rupees in public funding precisely to provide healthcare. Public healthcare is not charity.
Almost as troubling was the silence around the exchange. Hundreds appeared to be present, including journalists, yet hardly anyone seemed willing to tell a powerful official that this was not the moment to speak about grieving families that way. When that can happen publicly, the problem is larger than one remark. It says something about our relationship with power. Ministers are public servants, paid through public money. They are answerable to citizens, not the other way around. They are not gods.
The pattern is painfully familiar. A child is assaulted. Another disappears and is later found dead. Now newborns die inside a government hospital. There is outrage, an inquiry, condolences and promises. Then attention moves elsewhere. Pakistan does not lack laws, budgets or committees. It lacks enforcement and consequences. Public hospitals need independent fire, electrical and equipment inspections, transparent accounting of their budgets and clear emergency procedures. There must also be a proper security policy: who can enter sensitive wards, who controls access during emergencies, how quickly locked areas can be opened, and enough trained security personnel around critical units to protect patients without obstructing rescue efforts.
Crimes against minors need properly funded investigative units, faster prosecution and national tracking from complaint to outcome. When institutions fail, responsibility must lead somewhere. The real test of a state is not what its officials say after children die. It is whether its institutions protect them before tragedy occurs. Fourteen newborns entered PIMS needing care and never returned home. Their deaths should not be treated as fate. They were children entrusted to a public institution that failed to keep them safe.
—The writer is an economist, based in Washington, DC.
