Dear reader,

At least 122 people have died in fires in Indian hospitals since just August 2020, according to news reports compiled by Scroll.in.

It is a shocking number of avoidable deaths. What is perhaps more shocking is how slow the government has been to address the problem. Consider this: in April 2021, a proposal to install a firefighting system in the Ahmednagar Civil Hospital was sent to Maharashtra's health department. The proposal was pushed around between the department and the state's Public Works Department for eight months.

It was finally cleared eight months later, on 9 November. But this was too late: three days earlier, a deadly fire at the hospital’s ICU had killed 14.

This week in Common Ground, Tabassum Barnagarwala reports on this devastating problem, and the government’s failure to fix it. Read the story here.

All our earlier Common Ground stories are archived here. And you can support in-depth reportage on more such overlooked subjects with a contribution to the Scroll Ground Reporting Fund.

Ajay Krishnan
Contributing Editor