8 patients perish in hospital blaze

Eight intensive care unit patients died after a fire broke out in a hospital in the northwestern city of Bursa, authorities said yesterday.

The fire, which mainly affected a children's ward and the intensive care unit, broke out in the early hours of Tuesday morning in the radiology department located in the hospital’s basement.

"Rescue and extinguishing efforts were swiftly carried out. However, eight patients in the intensive care unit died from the effects of smoke inhalation while being transferred," Interior Minister Beşir Atalay told reporters at the scene. Forty-four people were evacuated from the Şevket Yılmaz state hospital in the Yıldırım district and sent for treatment to 10 other hospitals, officials said.

Authorities are trying to establish whether the fire was the result of a technical glitch or due to negligence.

Two inspectors from the Interior Ministry and officials from the Public Prosecutor’s Office were conducting an investigation into the cause of the fire, Health Minister Recep Akdağ told reporters after visiting the hospital.

Bursa Governor Şahabettin Harput said the blaze broke out due to an electrical fault in the radiology department, a theory later supported by provincial fire department head Orhan Doğan.
The intensive care unit was worst affected by the blaze, which sent thick smoke through a ventilation shaft to the upper floors before it was extinguished. A children’s ward was also badly affected by smoke and more than a dozen children, including newborn babies, were among the patients being treated at other hospitals. Akdağ praised the hospital staff "for risking their own lives" by joining firefighters in evacuating patients after the blaze.

"We might have faced a greater disaster if the response was delayed, and the fire spread to the whole hospital," he said. The same hospital had conducted a fire drill on April 28.

REGULATORS SCRUTINIZED

A fire at a state hospital in the northwestern city of Bursa that killed eight patients in intensive care yesterday has put safety standards at state hospitals under scrutiny. "The incident in the Bursa hospital, which is said to have been equipped with modern technology, gives an idea about how reliable the other state hospitals are in this respect and to what extent the fire drill proved successful here," said Bedriye Yorgun, chairwoman of the Health and Social Services Workers Union.

The problem is structural, and the ministry should first question itself, Yorgun said, adding that it should strengthen hospitals’ technical infrastructure and take extra technical measures in the event of such emergencies, especially in hospitals where the number of patients is significant.

"The ministry’s perception of safety simply implies uniformed security guards who wait at the door and provide protection. The ministry employs subcontractors to perform safety services in state hospitals, but handing over such services to subcontractors is itself against principles of the social state," she said. "It should then carefully examine whether the number of employed staff is sufficient and whether they are well-trained."

Önder Kahveci, chairman of the Turkish Health Care Workers' Union, or Türk Sağlık-Sen, said state institutions including hospitals were not physically prepared to face such incidents or disasters such as an earthquake. "The hospital buildings in Turkey are usually expanded by adding new structures, which creates problems. They are weak in general against such disasters, and they are strengthened afterwards with additional methods," Kahveci said.

"The ministry should also examine its hospitals and produce alternatives as to whether the intensive care units can be moved to another place closer to exits or what can be done in the event of electricity outages, for instance." Although the ministry employed subcontractors to provide food, security and cleaning services in state hospitals, it was the duty of the ministry to protect the health of the patients and health personnel, he said. Ahmet Tandoğan, chairman of the Association on Patient and Patient Relatives Rights, said the hospitals’ emergency plans usually remained on paper and did not include patients.

Procedures not clear

"What should be done in the event of an emergency and how it should be done are not clear and systematic in the hospitals’ emergency plans," Tandoğan said. "These plans, similarly, don’t include patients and their companions who take care of them in the hospital. They are not kept informed on what they have to do in an emergency. They are not as safe as they should be."

Besides including well-trained and a sufficient number of personnel, the technical competence also played a crucial role in preventing such tragedies, he said adding that the state hospitals unfortunately were not technically strong and well-equipped. Mahmut Kaçar, chairman of the Union of Health and Social Service Workers, or Sağlık-Sen, said the ministry had focused more on projects that would provide sufficient technical equipment as part of the EU harmonization process, especially in the past six or seven years. "But the physical infrastructure is unfortunately insufficient in the hospitals that were built before that," he said.