16 Jul Enquiry into Egypt Hospital Fire
This Wednesday, Khaled Abdel-Gaffer, Egypt’s health minister ordered an official investigation into the cause of a hospital fire that engulfed the intensive care unit of the Sidi Salem Central Hospital in Kafr El-Shiekh, not 134 km from Cairo.
As of the publishing of this article, firefighters have isolated the cause of the blaze to be from an electrical short circuit, however, why this electrical fault occurred is still to be investigated.
More than 27 patients were evacuated as smoke swallowed hallways and fire crawled through rooms destroying countless pieces of medical equipment in the process. Due to the combined efforts of 21 ambulances, five fire engines and teams of hospital staff, no one was injured in the blaze.
One patient did pass away two hours after being transferred, however, potentially due to the stress of the event and having to be transferred.
The remaining patients were moved to nearby medical facilities which had capacity.
The hospital’s power supply was also cut – leading to further speculation about the fault.
Kafr El-Sheikh Gov. Maj. Gen. Jamal Nour El-Din later visited the scene of the fire and directed authorities to return the hospital to full operation as soon as possible.