A fire broke out at Pune's Aundh District Hospital (ADH) on November 17 last year in the store room located next to the Special Newborn Care Unit (SNCU). The fire was caused by an electrical malfunction in the ceiling fan.
At that time, ADH had a total of 24 incubators. However, after the fire incident, the number dropped to 12, and now, due to ongoing repair work, only five incubators remain functional.
After the fire incident, the SNCU was temporarily shifted near the pediatric ward, and only 12 SNCU units were set up in this ward. The original SNCU ward remains vacant as repair work was pending. After almost a year, the repair work has started, and the SNCU units once again have been set up inside the pediatric ward, and due to the space limitations, only five incubator units have been set up, which is leading to serious inconvenience for patients and parents of newborns in need of critical care, claims health activist Sharad Shetty.
"The hospital now is functional only with five units of SNCU, and that too has been merged with the pediatric ward for the past few days. There's no separate room allocated for running these SNCUs, and it raises a lot of concern, and also it has come to our notice that the patients, the expecting mother's are referred to either Sassoon or YCM hospital. The hospital administration is more concerned about the financial matters than about ensuring public healthcare facilities. The ongoing inefficiency has raised concerns about whether the state government is even considering the possibility of shutting down the hospital if the situation continues to deteriorate," Shetty said.
Meanwhile, speaking to The Free Press Journal, Pune district civil surgeon, Dr Nagnath Yempalle said, "We have been writing letters and following up with higher authorities requesting them for renovation of SNCU. The budget sanctioning took time, and now the repair work has started. It will take another three months to complete the repair work. We have 12 incubators at present, but the hospital needs at least 50 incubators. After the fire incident the from 24 incubators, the number reduced to 12 because we had no space to accommodate, but after the repair work, we will be increasing the numbers."
