3 patients die after ICU fire

Bulbul Ahmed Kajol heard an explosion near ICU bed-12 at the Covid-19 unit of Dhaka Medical College Hospital's (DMCH) new building around 8:10am yesterday.

Soon after, he saw smoke spreading out from the ICU bed.

The sudden and awful incident forced him to evacuate the ICU and shift his ailing brother Abdullah Al Mahmud, 48, a critical Covid-19 patient, like attendants of 13 other ICU patients there.

Three of those ICU patients, including Bulbul's brother, died after they were relocated.

Two other dead were identified as Engineer Kazi Golam Mostafa, 66, of Chandpur, and Kishore Chandra Roy, 70, of Tangail.

Some of the 14 critical patients were taken to a nearby coronary care unit (CCU) on the same floor of the 10-storey building whereas some were shifted to other wards or hospitals.

According to Bulbul, the smoke spread out so dangerously that they could not even see anything or breathe easily.

"When I was taking my brother out of the room like others, nurses instructed us to rush to the nearby CCU.

"But my brother died after two hours as there was no high-flow oxygen supply," he told The Daily Star.

"None of the hospital officials helped us while evacuating the ICU. I had to put off medical equipment from my brother's body while moving him out," he said.

Charred and melted medical equipment at the ICU of Dhaka Medical College and Hospital after a fire yesterday morning swept through this critical care unit causing the deaths of at least three Covid-19 patients. Photo: Palash Khan

Five firefighting units brought the flames under control around 8:40am and completely doused the fire at 9:35am.

Seeking anonymity, a nurse who was deployed at the unit, said, five of them were inside the ICU ward when the fire broke out.

"Five others were inside the nurse staff room," she added.

After the smoke spread out, the hospital officials instructed all the patients to be shifted to the nearby CCU, she said.

"We have managed to take more than 15 different ICU devices to the safe zone," she added.

According to officials, the main ICU unit of the country's largest tertiary hospital has around 900 Covid-19 dedicated beds at a time.

Since this Covid-19 unit was launched after the coronavirus transmission started in the country in March last year, these 14 ICU beds had "never been vacant" so far, they said.

There was no injury directly caused by the fire, the hospital authorities said in a press release.

Three committees -- a five-member committee on behalf of the health ministry, a nine-member committee on behalf of the DMCH, and another four-member committee on behalf of the fire service -- have been formed to investigate the fire incident.

In the recent past, at least three fire incidents took place at the DMCH, including one in the general ICU of the hospital in early January.

Brig Gen Nazmul Haque, director of the hospital, told The Daily Star yesterday that the adjacent 20-bed Post-CCU unit has been kept closed but will be resumed within days.

"As we will need time to resume the Covid-19 ICU unit, we will convert the 10-bed high-dependency unit at the burn unit to ICU within a week," he added.