'It's our duty': Doctors help 30-yr-old deliver baby girl amid massive fire in AIIMS
The woman gave birth to a healthy baby girl at around 9:30 pm while the rescue operations were still on to douse the flames.
New Delhi: Doctors at the institute successfully helped a woman to deliver a baby girl amid a major fire that broke out at the teaching block of the All India Institute of Medical Science (AIIMS) on Saturday evening.
A 30-year-old mother, who was admitted in the gynaecology ward on Saturday morning, was shifted to the operation theatre at Dr Rajendra Prasad Centre for Ophthalmic Sciences of the institute while the patients were evacuated from the ward.
The woman gave birth to a healthy baby girl at around 9:30 pm while the rescue operations were still on to douse the flames.
One of the senior doctors who helped to deliver the baby said attending to patients was their duty and they couldn’t ignore it under any situation and the life of the patient and her child was more important than anything, The Indian Express reported. “We immediately took her to the RP centre operation theatre for delivery,” he said adding the mother and child are both doing well.
AIIMS faced the biggest fire in its history, the department of lab medicine worked on full strength at a makeshift arrangement in the blood bank and to ensure that the patient services didn’t suffer.
The emergency lab was temporarily shut due to the precautionary measures as the fire broke naear the lab area which had a lot of expensive equipment.
The fire started at around 5 pm from the Microbiology department of AIIMS on Saturday and thick plumes of smoke billowed from the building, triggering panic among the patients, attendants and staff, and affecting the emergency services.
Former Union finance minister Arun Jaitley is also admitted at the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) of the cardio-neuro centre of the hospital, which is housed in a different building in the complex. Several prominent leaders have been visiting the hospital for the past few days to inquire about his health.
At least 34 fire tenders were rushed to the spot as the blaze spread to five floors. Fire-fighters were struggling to completely douse it even after five hours.