Not less than 11 newborns had been killed after a hearth tore via a neonatal unit of a regional hospital within the West African nation of Senegal, the nation’s president, Macky Sall, stated on Thursday on Twitter.
Mr. Sall, who was on a state go to to Angola, stated the blaze had damaged out at Abdou Aziz Sy Dabakh Hospital within the metropolis of Tivaouane, which is about 50 miles northeast of Dakar, the capital.
“To their moms and their households, I specific my deepest sympathy,” Mr. Sall stated. He gave no additional particulars.
Senegal’s well being minister, Abdoulaye Diouf Sarr, who was in Geneva for the World Well being Meeting, posted on Twitter, “We realized with sorrow of the lethal hearth within the neonatology division of the Mame A. A. Sy Dabakh hospital in Tivaouane.” He stated that he had dispatched a delegation to the positioning of the blaze and was reducing brief his journey to instantly return to Dakar.
He later informed the tv station TFM that “in accordance with a preliminary investigation, a brief circuit triggered the hearth.” The information website Senegal7 additionally reported that the hearth had damaged out round 8 p.m. on Wednesday.
Town’s mayor informed reporters that the hearth unfold quickly however three infants had been rescued, in accordance with the BBC.
Cheikh Bamba Dièye, minister of regional planning and native authorities, suggested on Twitter that deeper scrutiny of the state of the nation’s hospitals was so as.
“I’m appalled by the horrific and unacceptable loss of life of 11 new child infants in Tivaouane,” he wrote. “The recurrence of tragedies in our hospitals reminds us of the duty to totally overview the standard of service in our hospitals.”
Senegal’s hospital system was already dealing with public scrutiny over a case by which a lady and her fetus died in April within the northern city of Louga after her requests for a cesarean part had been ignored, in accordance with information stories. In response, members of a nationwide midwives’ affiliation went on strike, the hospital’s director was dismissed, and 6 midwives had been charged with failing to help an individual at risk, the BBC reported. Three had been acquitted this month, and the others acquired suspended six-month sentences.
There have been a lot of devastating fires in Senegal lately. In April 2021, 4 new child infants died after a hearth broke out at a hospital within the northern city of Linguère, which the mayor stated had most definitely been attributable to {the electrical} malfunction of an air-conditioning unit within the maternity ward. In 2013, not less than 9 youngsters died in a home blaze within the Medina neighborhood of Dakar, Senegal’s state information company reported on the time. Seven of the youngsters had been Koranic college students who took courses from a holy man who employed them as beggars.
In 2017, a hearth killed not less than 22 folks and injured greater than 100 throughout an Islamic competition within the village of Médina Gounas, within the japanese a part of the nation. In 2010, six folks had been killed and several other injured after a blaze broke out on the identical non secular retreat.
Mike Ives and Elian Peltier contributed reporting.
