Mother’s crumb of comfort after losing one of her triplets in Senegal fire

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TIVAOUANE, Senegal (Reuters) – Anta Ba arrived on the gate of the Tivaouane hospital in western Senegal early on Thursday to breastfeed her child daughter, the one one of her triplets not discharged as a result of she was nonetheless thought-about too weak.

But a guard stopped her and advised her that there had been a fire in the neonatal unit. None of the newborns had survived.

Ba, 30, was shattered. Her solely crumb of comfort was that her new child daughter and son had been wholesome sufficient to be taken residence from the ward on Wednesday afternoon, simply hours earlier than the tragedy struck.

The triplets have been born on the hospital by caesarean part on May 9. All are nonetheless to be named.

“God saved my two infants. This is God’s will, it hurts lots, but it surely’s God’s will,” Ba advised Reuters, as she nursed her boy and lady on a mattress in a dimly-lit room in Keur Assane Mbaye, a hamlet surrounded by sandy shrubs an hour from Tivaouane.

“I used to be capable of get better my two infants. I can solely give thanks.”

Witnesses stated an explosion had ripped via the ward containing 11 incubators holding newborns.

Ba, like others, is struggling to bear the ache as she awaits solutions from the hospital and the federal government about what went mistaken.

“The hospital didn’t inform us what precisely occurred. We haven’t any data on how we are going to bury our youngsters. The hospital hasn’t advised us but,” she stated.

The hospital and a authorities spokesperson declined to touch upon the incident whereas an investigation was underway.

SCREAMS

The blaze at Tivaouane is simply the most recent in a string of disasters to strike Senegal’s underfunded hospitals.

In April final 12 months, 4 infants died in a hospital fire in the northern city of Linguere.

The authorities has launched an investigation into what brought about Wednesday’s blast. President Macky Sall additionally sacked his well being minister and declared three days of nationwide mourning.

Tivaouane’s mayor, Demba Diop Sy, advised reporters that late on Wednesday, as two nurses in the neonatal unit have been doing their rounds, a short-circuit in the locked room brought about a sudden explosion, knocking them each unconscious.

Sy, who rushed to the scene on Wednesday evening, stated the fire had been introduced underneath management inside 10 minutes.

Outside the constructing, the one seen signal of the blast is a streak of black smoke staining the wall round a shattered window of the highest ground of the two-storey turquoise constructing.

Mamadou Mbaye, a Tivaouane resident, stated he had been accompanying a relative to the hospital’s radiology ward when he heard {that a} fire had damaged out on the neonatal unit.

“I ran over. I noticed ladies crying and screaming. I then went as much as the second ground and the midwives have been there, they have been screaming and screaming. It was darkish, there was lots of smoke and it was extraordinarily sizzling,” Mbaye advised journalists.

A pal who accompanied him then pressured open the door of the unit, he stated. But it was already too late for the infants.

(Reporting by Bate Felix and Ngouda Dione; Editing by Mike Collett-White and Gareth Jones)



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