Sehore (Madhya Pradesh): The private hospitals, whose number has shot up after the corona pandemic in the district, do not care two hoots about the fire safety norms, official sources said on Thursday. Despite that, the officials concerned have given permission to private parties to set up hospitals.
According to sources, if there is any incident of fire in any of the hospitals, there will be a major problem due to lack of fire safety norms. Nevertheless, a large number of patients are admitted to these hospitals.
The situation has come to such a pass that even after inspection of those hospitals by government officials, the management of those health centres did not submit a no-objection certificate (NOC) to the office of the chief medical and health officer.
Condition of fire safety
There are 65 hospitals in the district, out of which 50 hospitals were given provisional NOC, but there are ten such hospitals as are running without NOC. Similarly, five hospitals have temporary NOC. When the health department came to know of it, they decided to inspect 40 private hospitals.
A team inspected those hospitals two months ago, but none of the health centres have submitted NOC.
Irregularities galore
Besides lack of fire safety norms, many other irregularities have come to light during the inspection. There is no parking lot outside many of those private hospitals. Many are run from alleys and without security guards. A few of them do not have trained staff to handle patients, but the officials concerned do not pay any attention to such problems, said some residents.
When the issue was raised before chief medical and health officer Dr Sudhir Kumar Dehria, he said those hospitals, which did not submit fire safety NOC, were served notices. If they do not reply to the notices, they will face the music, Dr Dehria said.
Additional collector Guncha Sanowar said that he had sought all the records from the chief medical officer to inquire into the case. A team will be set up to probe the case, he said.
