Jaipur’s hospital fire that could have been prevented

SIX lives were lost at Jaipur’s Sawai Man Singh Hospital when a midnight blaze turned the trauma ICU into a trap. Families allege that doctors fled and the gate was locked. The fire alarm never rang, sprinklers were silent and the lone fireman on duty was overwhelmed. Relatives broke glass panes to pull out their loved ones on bedsheets. A short circuit had been reported half an hour earlier — dismissed by staff who said it would “settle down.” If this sounds familiar, it should. In May 2024, seven newborn babies died in a fire at a neonatal hospital in Delhi that was operating on an expired licence. Six months later, a blaze at Jhansi Medical College exposed how even large public institutions lacked evacuation plans and functioning audits. Jaipur is now the latest entry in a grim, preventable pattern.

The causes rarely vary: outdated wiring, oxygen-rich ICUs, non-working alarms, locked exits and official complacency. Safety drills and electrical audits exist largely on paper. The Rajasthan government has ordered a probe, as governments always do — but what matters is enforcement that outlasts public outrage. Hospitals are meant to save lives, not extinguish them. Every state should be compelled to publish annual hospital-safety scores, listing inspections, equipment checks and emergency-drill records. Fire-safety certification must be mandatory for licence renewal; non-compliance should mean immediate closure. Each hospital must maintain an on-duty fire-safety officer with authority to stop operations if protocols are breached.

The Jaipur tragedy is not an accident; it is the sum of repeated warnings ignored. Until India treats hospital fires as crimes of negligence, not acts of fate, the same flames will keep returning — to Delhi, to Jhansi, to Jaipur — and to every place where indifference smoulders longer than justice.