11 babies died in maternity hospital fire

A fire broke out in a hospital in Senegal. The fire broke out in a room full of newborns to be in an incubator. None of them survived. The incubators were hooked up to oxygen cylinders, which caught fire, causing an explosion around 9 p.m. “I feel great pain. My wife had come here for a caesarean section and the child died (…) I couldn’t even see my son“, explains a man, whose child is dead.

According to experts, a faulty extension cord caught fire in the incubator room. An insufficient explanation for the families. “Sometimes, there are shortcomings that we see in the hospitals of Senegall”, says Moustapha Cissé, the uncle of a victim. In April 2021, four babies had already died in a fire in Lunguère (Senegal), a year later, a woman and one baby died after waiting 30 hours in Louga (Senegal) The country demands accountability from the Minister of Health.