It was in January last that Shabnam, a mother of four, locked her daughters namely Noor, Khadija and Aliya aged 6, 4, 2 respectively in a room of her house in Ichhra, and left with her eldest daughter Meerab to buy groceries. While she was away, one of the girls switched the television on which apparently led to short-circuiting. Within moments the sparks turned into flames and the whole room was engulfed in ensuing fire and smoke.

It took neighbours some time to realise there was fire in the vicinity and they instantly rushed to the spot. Despite trying hard, they could not rescue the girls as the door was made of iron. Had it been a normal wooden door they would have broken it down easily. All the three girls were rushed to the hospital but they could not survive. They had to move from one hospital to the other on grounds that they did not have burn units. As per media reports, the only functional burn unit, with extremely limited bed-space, at the Mayo Hospital was also unattended at that time.

This is just one example of how children become victims of tragedies, especially those involving burn injuries, due to the carelessness of their parents. Leaving the minor girls in the custody of a relative or a trustworthy neighbour would have been a far better option in this case.

In this context, there are calls from medical professionals, civil society organisations, patient welfare bodies, relatives of burn victims and the general public to create awareness among the masses on how to avoid burn incidents. Besides, they insist that the Punjab government prioritise this issue and establish enough burn units to cater to the needs of a large number of burn victims.

To get an idea about the number of fire incidents, one can have a look at the consolidated report of emergency calls and rescue operations carried out by Rescue 1122 in Punjab from October 10, 2004 to August 08, 2014. The report states there have been 16,122 incidences of fire in the province during this period.

The situation on ground is that there is only a 12-bed burn ward in Mayo Hospital where hundreds of burn victims are brought to the emergency as well as the Out Patient Department (OPD). The unit at Mayo Hospital has limited resources, inadequate staff and hardly any ointments and medicines to be provided to the patients for free. Therefore, it is quite common that the visiting patients are discharged after their initial treatment and not admitted in the ward.

Sobia Qadir Butt Advocate, who works with Madadgar National Helpline, shares an incident with TNS where around 40 burn victims were turned out of the hospital after minor treatment. She says these children were burnt when some gaseous balloons caught fire in a village on Kamahan Road, off Ferozepur Road. The reason simply was that they did not have medicines or beds so many victims were shifted to other wards of Mayo Hospital and Jinnah Hospital.

But when one of the victims passed away and the mass media highlighted the sorry state of affairs, medicines were imported and makeshift burn units were set up at different points to treat these children, she adds. She says they have observed that many children suffer from burn injuries as people leave heaters and stoves on all the time to heat up their places and do not keep a watch on the children who play nearby. Sometimes they do not properly shut the supply of gas which results in leakages and later on cause fires, she adds.

An official in the Punjab health department says no doubt the capacity of burn unit at Mayo Hospital is limited but the government has plans to overcome this deficiency by setting up a 200-bed Burns & Reconstructive Surgery Centre at Jinnah Hospital, Lahore. This centre was approved back in 2004 and a lot of initial work was completed during the tenure of Pervaiz Elahi government in Punjab. The building is also there but the required staff is not. This may be a reason why Shahbaz Sharif government has not taken interest in it, he observes.

However, the official states the good news is that there is significant process on the project and the burn centre at Jinnah Hospital is hiring staff at the moment. He says a leading cosmetic surgeon Moazzam Nazir Tarar is heading this initiative and it is hoped the centre will become functional soon. The government is taking the matter seriously as it knows around 5,000 severe burn victims are brought to the hospitals of Lahore which lack facility to handle them, he adds.

Dr Ahmed Raza, District Emergency Officer (DEO), Lahore says the burn victims have to be handled with care and cannot be shifted like other patients. The Rescue 1122 starts treatment the moment a victim is shifted into a vehicle. As burn victim loses water content fast. They are given IV injections to recover this deficiency before they reach hospitals. Patients with more than 40 per cent burn have little chance of survival.

He agrees that the treatment facilities for burn victims are not sufficient at the moment but hopes they will be soon there as the government is working on war footing in this regard. The DEO tells TNS that they had a meeting with Punjab Health Advisor Khawaja Salman Rafiq last month in which they were told that the government was coming up with an integrated plan to give timely and quality treatment to burn victims.

Dr Ashraf Nizami, President Punjab Medical Association (PMA) says the only reliable burn unit in the province is the one at the Combined Military Hospital (CMH) Kharian. The one at Mayo Hospital, he thinks, cannot be called a proper unit as it does not comply with the required standards and lacks hygiene and proper upkeep. Based on a study which he carried out in the recent past, he says a lot of people suffer due to lack of safety measures at workplace.

Children who work at tea shops, brick kilns and furnaces are vulnerable to injuries. It is a common practice that their employers mention these children as adults in their records to avoid complications. So strict compliance of labour and safety laws can bring down the incidences of injuries, he submits.

Dr Zarqa Taimur, a dermatologist and Pakistan Tehreek Insaf (PTI) Lahore Women’s Wing President, believes the Punjab government cares less about this issue as it affects mostly the poor and the treatment cost is too high. She says burn victims need three times more food than a normal individual and have to undergo repeated blood transfusion besides taking expensive medicines and applying ointments.

She says a lot of burn incidents can be avoided by changing habits. For example, a large number of children die from scalding -- which is a form of burning from heated fluids such as boiling water, milk, tea or steam. Such incidents are quite common in villages and among poor families who live and cook in the same room. The children playing there or held by their mothers while cooking are highly vulnerable, she says.

The most difficult part, she says, is to treat patients who put themselves on fire or have been put on fire by others intentionally. In these cases the inner layers of skin are burnt as well as vital human organs like heart are exposed to heat for a considerable period of time.