Eleven newborn babies have died in a hospital fire in the western city of Tivaouane in Senegal, the country’s President has said.
President Macky Sall tweeted that the fire at Mame Abdou Aziz Sy Dabakh hospital was in the maternity department.
According to reports, the hospital had been newly inaugurated and the fire was caused by a short circuit, the fire spread very quickly and emergency services were still at the scene.
The city’s Mayor, Demba Diop Sy said three babies were saved from the fire.
“This situation is very unfortunate and extremely painful,” Health Minister Abdoulaye Diouf Sarr said from Geneva, where he was attending a World Health Organization meeting.
President Sall wrote in a tweet “to their mothers and their families, I express my deepest sympathy,” he said an investigation was under way and he would be cutting his trip short to return to Senegal immediately.
The incident has sparked a wave of indignation on social media over the state of the country’s healthcare provision.
Opposition MP Mamadou Lamine Diallo criticized the government, tweeting: “more babies burned in a public hospital… this is unacceptable”.
Amnesty called for all of Senegal’s neo-natal wards to be inspected after a similar incident occurred in the northern town of Linguère last year, where four newborn babies were killed there after a fire broke out at a hospital’s maternity ward. At the time, the mayor said there was an electrical fault in the air conditioning unit of the maternity ward.
Wednesday’s tragedy also follows a national outcry over the death of a woman in labour, Astou Sokhna, who died while reportedly begging for a Caesarean during her 20-hour labour ordeal. Her unborn child also died.
Bbc/Adebukola Aluko
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