Senegalese President Macky Sall sacked his Minister of Health on Thursday after the fire which caused the death of eleven babies in a provincial public hospital the day before and which sowed distress, consternation and anger among relatives and in public opinion.
The drama of Tivaoune (west), caused by a short circuit according to the first information, is the latest to highlight the shortcomings of the health system of this poor country.
It has prompted promises of modernization and investigations from the authorities, and calls for the resignation in public opinion and the opposition, in particular that of the Minister of Health Abdoulaye Diouf Sarr.
In the evening, at the time of the big news on public television, the presidency announced that the Head of State had issued a decree to “replace” Mr. Sarr with Marie Khemesse Ngom Ndiaye, previously Director General of Health public.
“More babies burned in a public hospital. It’s unacceptable Macky Sall,” tweeted, among many others, an opposition deputy, Mamadou Lamine Diallo.
The Head of State has declared three days of national mourning. He will bring forward his return from traveling abroad on Friday to go to Tivaouane on Saturday, according to his services.
The authorities have announced an investigation and justice has promised to be intractable.
“The scientific police are in the process of making material findings. We cannot comment on the real causes of the fire,” said prosecutor Abdoulaye Ba in front of a forest of cameras at the courthouse.
Not far from there, in front of the Mame Abdou Aziz Sy Dabakh hospital, a mother barely standing up calls out to a man whom she expects to tell her where her son Mohamed is, hospitalized there 10 days ago because he had “bodily ache” according to his father. “God made the best decision,” replied the individual, immediately taken over by the father, Alioune Diouf, a 54-year-old driver.
“You shouldn’t have told him that way,” reprimands Alioune Diouf, as his wife collapses.
Mohamed, baptized on Monday, was the couple’s second child. His mother went back and forth between the house and the hospital to breastfeed him. His father had come on Wednesday to bring his medicine. “The beds seemed fine to me,” he recalls. He was alerted to the tragedy by the media.
What exactly happened inside the enclosure painted green, inaccessible to journalists on Thursday, the level of surveillance of this establishment of relatively modest size and means remains to be established.
The newborns were gathered in the neonatal unit, perhaps in the same room, 11 or more according to the sources.
– Anger growls –
The fire reportedly broke out around 9:00 p.m. (local and GMT). It was caused by “a short circuit and the fire spread very quickly,” said Mayor Demba Diop.
In front of the hospital or on social networks the accusations of negligence fuse. But the mayor assured on the spot that a midwife and a nurse were in the room.
“There was a noise and an explosion, it lasted three minutes maximum. Five minutes later, the firefighters were there. People used fire extinguishers” but the products contained in the air conditioners accelerated the spread, a- he said. Both caregivers passed out but were revived, he said.
“There was no negligence,” he said.
Witnesses as well as the mayor indicated that a number of babies had been saved from the flames.
But eleven did not survive according to the authorities. Relatives were unable to recover their remains on Thursday.
Anger rumbled outside the hospital in a small group of anonymous women.
– “Sanctions” –
“It’s negligence. Leaving the children without anyone to watch them and they say + it is God who willed it +.
A mother takes the precaution of entrusting her child to someone, even when she goes to the toilet”, vituperated one of them, while a man in his fifties invoked “the divine will”.
Tivaouane, about 40,000 inhabitants, is the stronghold of the Tidianes, one of the important Muslim brotherhoods which play an essential social role in Senegal.
The Caliph of the Tidianes, Serigne Babacar Sy Mansour, lamented the state of the hospital several months ago. The drama “was predictable so much the level of dilapidation had exceeded understanding”, wrote his nephew Serigne Cheikh Tidiane Sy Al Amine in a tribune.
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