The Times coverage of the horrible
hospital fire in Kolkata (
olim Calcutta) suggests that one of its causes was the fact that the Advanced Medical Research Institute is a
private hospital, which means apparently less heavily regulated than the public ones:
The blaze is sure to raise fresh questions about safety in India’s
booming private hospital business, which, like much else in India, is
poorly regulated.
The hospital had recently been named one of the city’s best by The Week,
an Indian magazine that regularly ranks hospitals. Like many such
hospitals in India, the Advanced Medical Research Institute offered
expensive Western-style facilities to middle- and upper-middle-class
Indians who have shunned government hospitals, which are crowded and
less well equipped.
A great hospital in the aspects seen by its wealthy clientele, in other words, but not so much so in those seen by India's famously onerous, nitpicking regulators--like what are they storing in the basement (diesel fuel and motor oil), is the fire detection system regularly tested and the staff drilled,
