A fire broke out in the kidney department of the new Dhaka Medical College Hospital (DMCH) building on Sunday afternoon creating panic among the patients and their attendants leaving no one injured in the incident.
The hospital staff and firefighters doused the fire that broke out at around 2:45pm on the third floor of the DMCH new building within half an hour, said the DMCH police outpost in-charge Inspector Bacchu Mia.
The hospital staff started dousing the fire, said Duty Officer at the fire service headquarters Khaleda Yasmin, while two units of firefighters reached the spot at around 3:00pm and the fire was doused at 3:12pm.
The fire originated from an air conditioner in the corridor of the kidney department where the patients were undergoing dialysis, said the officer.
Akbar Hossain, a ward boy of the kidney department, said that there were some 30 patients there during the fire all of whom were brought out of the hospital.
Panic gripped the patients in the hospital during the fire while some of them fell sick as they were brought out of the building.
The patients were later shifted to some other departments, and the process to clean the kidney department and resume services were going on.
Earlier on 17 March 2021, at least three patients died while being evacuated after a fire broke out at the Covid intensive care unit of the DMCH.
Fire brigades then said that the flame might have originated from a high-flow nasal cannula machine at the ICU.
