The recent fire incident at Bone and Joint Hospital Burzalla shows that even main referral hospitals of Kashmir valley in Srinagar the summer capital are vulnerable to fir outbreaks and as such the review of the fire safety measures at the main referral hospitals of both Kashmir valley and as well as Jammu division has not become only inevitable but also unavoidable. Had the fire safety measures been review and subsequently upgraded from time to time at the Bone & Joint Hospital, the huge blaze that damaged the hospital building and as well as the infrastructure won’t have occurred at all. Notably the Barzalla Bone & Joint Hospital Building was declared unsafe by J&K R&B department immediately after 2014 devastating floods but since then successive popular governments of erstwhile J&K State did not bother to even think about the demolition and reconstruction of the hospital building and thereafter the Health & Medical Education department has not also upgraded the fire safety measures at the valley’s top referral hospitals in summer capital Srinagar. Since most of the patients admitted at the Bone & Joint hospital are physically disabled, many of them could not even come out from the building till the attendants and the hospital staffers helpled them to move out from the building for safety. Usually people concerned about the fire safety measures both within and outside the Government talk about safety audit but no one talks about the fact that fire incidents can’t be averted at the hospitals which are not sufficiently equipped with fire extinguishers and hospital staffers too are not trained well to operate the fire extinguishers in the hours of fire emergency.
Since the review of the fire safety measures at all the hospitals both in Kashmir valley and Jammu division is an issue of grave concern deserving the immediate attention and intervention of the top brass of health and medical education department, the issues of concern is that reducing the review of fire safety measures to only Bone & Joint Hospital Barzulla would keep alive the fear of fire breakouts at other referral hospitals both in Srinagar and Jammu in future also.
Few years back the J&K Government had proposed fire safety training for the staffers at the hospitals for the purposes of handling fire emergency incidents in case of the occurrence of any fire emergency at the hospitals but the proposal was just reduced to discussion at few review meetings of the health & medical education department. Not only the fire safety audit but also the review of fire safety measures at all other hospitals both in Kashmir valley and Jammu division deserves the immediate attention and intervention of the top brass of health & medical education department. Since the review of the fire safety measures at all the hospitals both in Kashmir valley and Jammu division is an issue of grave concern deserving the immediate attention and intervention of the top brass of health and medical education department, the issues of concern is that reducing the review of fire safety measures to only Bone & Joint Hospital Barzulla would keep alive the fear of fire breakouts at other referral hospitals both in Srinagar and Jammu in future also.
