During an important meeting convened on Wednesday, District Collector Dr Ilaiyaraja T instructed directors of private hospitals and nursing homes to ensure safety arrangements and to conduct regular fire drills and fire safety audit.

Presiding over the meeting, Collector Dr Ilaiyaraja instructed the hospital directors to keep their fire alarm system updated, pay special attention towards quality of fire extinguishers and electrical equipments and impart compulsory training to the staff for using fire extinguishers and other rescue activities.

Vice-President, Madhya Pradesh Jan Abhiyan Parishad, Dr Jitendra Jamdar, Municipal Commissioner, Ashish Vashisth, Chief Executive Officer, Jila Panchayat, Dr Salodi Sidana, Additional Collector, Sher Singh Meena, Joint Director, Health, Dr Sanjay Mishra, Dr Rajesh Dhirawani and the directors and managers of different private hospitals attended the meeting.

The meeting initiated with observing of two-minute silence for the departed souls who lost their lives during devastating fire incident took place at New Life Multispecialty Hospital.

The Collector said that the district administration is all alert to avoid painful incidents like that of New Life Multispecialty Hospital in future and added that no comprise will be done with the safety of patients.

Now it is compulsory for all the private hospitals to fulfill all the official formalities for registration and it’s renewal. The Collector also warned to cancelled the registration of those hospital which would not fulfilled formalities and close all those private hospitals which did not received temporary NOC after expiry of their provisional fire NOC. He also instructed around 52 private hospitals not to admit new patients until all official formalities fulfilled.

The Collector informed that a team of expert doctors presently carrying out inspection at all the private hospitals and the hospital management need to fulfill the drawbacks highlighted by the team members otherwise their registration will be cancelled. The NDRF team explained the hospital directors about proper use of fire extinguishers and emphasised to offer proper training to the hospital staff.