ISLAMABAD, June 3 (Xinhua) -- At least eight newborns died over last 24 hours allegedly due to failure of the air-conditioning system amid simmering temperature in a public hospital in Sahiwal district of Pakistan’s eastern Punjab province, local media and officials said on late Sunday night.
Sahiwal Deputy Commissioner Zaman Wattoo had written a letter to the Punjab government's Specialised Healthcare & Medical Education Department recounting a chain of events allegedly leading to the infants' deaths, mainly the failure of the air-conditioning (AC) system.
The official said that he received an emergency call on late Saturday night from an attendant of a patient informing him that infants had started dying due to non-functioning of AC system in the pediatric ward of the District Headquarters Hospital Sahiwal.
“I hurriedly reached the ward and found the air-conditioning system out of order which had resulted in abnormal indoor temperature," said the official, adding that there might be a possibility that seeral other deaths caused by the airconditioning failure have not been reported.
