A fire broke out in the neonatal ICU at the government district hospital in Madhya Pradesh’s Chhindwara, resulting in the death of an infant and injuries to two other newborns. According to officials, the incident took place around 1:50 a.m. after a radiant warmer machine in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit caught fire due to sparks in its filament coil. The district administration has ordered an investigation into the incident, and the civil surgeon will probe the cause behind the fire.
Hospital in-charge and civil surgeon Kanchan Dubey stated that the three infants were referred to the government medical college in Jabalpur after an initial examination. Dubey attributed the tragedy to an accident and denied any negligence on the part of the hospital staff. The fire was reportedly caused by a short circuit in the coil of the radiant warmer machine, which produced sparks that fell on the oxygen tubing and caused a fire in the cradle.
The staff managed to rescue the three children within 15 seconds, but they suffered burn injuries due to the foam mattress. Chhindwara Collector Harendra Narayan Mishra informed that the machine had undergone its annual maintenance on August 10, and no fault had been detected. The deceased child was born with dextrocardia, a congenital condition in which the child’s heart is on the right side of the chest.
The other two newborns were also born with serious conditions, with one of them being born with congenital diaphragmatic hernia, a surgical condition. The injured infants are reported to be stable. There were a total of 63 infants in the NICU, with 30 in the inborn unit and 33 in the outborn unit, where the tragedy took place.
However, the hospital administration had to accommodate two or three children in one cradle due to a shortage of warmer machines, with only 27 machines available. A relative of one of the affected children has alleged negligence on the part of the Chhindwara hospital staff and administration. The incident has raised concerns about the public health infrastructure in Chhindwara, which was criticized in 2025 after 25 children died of kidney failure due to consumption of an adulterated cough syrup.
Officials said this on Saturday (August 22, 2026). In November 2024, at least 17 infants were killed in Uttar Pradesh’s Jhansi after a massive fire broke out at the NICU of State-run Maharani Laxmi Bai Medical College Hospital.
