This Article is From Dec 30, 2013

Kolkata: AMRI Hospital unit reopens two years after fire

Kolkata: AMRI Hospital unit reopens two years after fire

The newly re-opened AMRI Hospital building where 90 people were killed in a fire in 2011, in Kolkata on December 30, 2013.

Kolkata: Two years after smoke billowed from a fire in the basement, which smothered to death more than 90 people, mostly patients, a part of the AMRI Hospital in Dhakuria reopened its doors today for treating the sick.

Sources in the premier healthcare facility told PTI that the outpatient's department (OPD) was opened on the ground and the first floor of the main building and Annexe-II.

Diagnostic tests like ECG, X-Ray, were also available.

The hospital's licence was cancelled by the fire department after the blaze on December 9, 2011.

The Annexe I building, where the fire started, is still shut down.

A hospital spokesperson said they got the license to restart the OPD facilities few days back, but for the in-patient facility, they need to comply with the fire department norms before seeking a license for admitting patients.

More than 90 persons, most of them patients, had died after inhaling smoke in the dead of night from the fire, which allegedly started from cotton and other materials stored illegally in the basement of the multi-specialty hospital.

All OPD chambers were open today, but only a few patients came to visit senior doctors like onco-radiologist Dr Kalyan Bhattacharya.

For the sake of underprivileged patients, AMRI is not taking doctors' consultation fees from those who come between 8 AM to 12 PM.

.