Members of the National Assembly's Standing Committee on National Health Services, Regulations and Coordination visited the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS) on Thursday to review the circumstances surrounding a fire at the hospital's nursery. During the visit, NA health panel member Mahesh Kumar Malani said that a technical fault may have caused the fire at Pims that killed 14 infants. "We suspect that there was a technical fault in the ward," said Malani while talking to the media after visiting the incident site.

Federal Health Minister Mustafa Kamal had earlier attributed the incident to a spark from an air conditioner. Talking to the media, Malani said officials had told the committee that the fire may have started from an air conditioner, but the claim had not been confirmed. "We were told that the fire started from an air conditioner. We were also told that it was an old AC and had not been working for quite some time," he said. Malani said the committee would convene an emergency meeting and seek answers from the relevant authorities.

Malani further said the CCTV footage reviewed by the committee had not established where the fire originated. He said a nurse had told the committee that staff were working when the fire suddenly broke out. He added that the affected ward dated back to 1990 and was not fit for keeping newborn babies. He said the investigation would also examine the maintenance of the old nursery and whether the right personnel had been assigned to the relevant duties.

Fourteen infants died after a fire broke out in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) of Pims on Wednesday morning. The nursery housed 15 newborns at the time, according to Pims officials, with only one infant rescued. The fire broke out at around 6:45am in the NICU on the third floor of the Mother and Child Health (MCH) ward. Federal Minister for Parliamentary Affairs Tariq Fazal Chaudhry separately said the fire was caused by a short circuit and that most of the children died from asphyxiation.