Thaindian News

New Delhi, Dec 12 (IANS) Two days after more than 90 people were killed in a fire that ravaged a hospital in Kolkata, the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) said they will consult health ministry officials and come out with safety guidelines for hospitals across the country.

“We will soon have a meeting with health ministry officials as it is the nodal ministry and we will review the medical guidelines and disaster preparedness of the hospital across the country,” NDMA vice chairman Shashidhar Reddy told IANS.

“At present we don’t have any disaster management guidelines which has specifics on how to manage a fire mishap inside a hospital premises. We need to work on that,” Reddy admitted.

He also said that based on the AMRI hospital blaze, one of the country’s worst fire disasters, in future “we need to be prepared to deal with such emergency situation”.

The fire at Kolkata’s well-known hospital broke out early Friday and toxic fumes quickly spread to other floors, suffocating to death 93 patients and staffers.

“Mishaps like this inside a hospital premises are of rare occurrence, still we need to be prepared. NDMA cannot take a decision alone as it involves lot of agencies, particularly state government, hospital management, fire services departments in the state,” Reddy added.

Reddy said best practices by international hospitals would also be looked into before the safety standards guidelines are framed.

NDMA, India’s apex disaster management body, strangely maintain that they concentrate only on natural disasters and, when it comes to manmade disasters, only nuclear, biological and chemical disasters are their concern - not fire mishaps.

“We don’t deal with fire mishaps like the one that occurred in Kolkata as it is not under the NDMA charter. Concerned fire service departments in states should deal with such fire incidents,” a senior NDMA official said, pleading anonymity.

NDMA sent a team of 49 NDRF officials immediately to the accident spot in Kolkata to check whether there was any chemical, radiological and biological radiation.

The NDMA also informed that they have trained officials in curbing radiation leaks but not to deal with fire mishaps.

The NDMA was set up in Dec 23, 2005, by the government, in recognition of the importance of disaster management as a national priority. Its formation was recommended in 2001 following the Gujarat earthquake.