ISLAMABAD: When fire erupted on Aug. 26 inside a nursery holding 15 vulnerable newborns at Islamabad’s largest public hospital, nurse Razia Noreen had seconds to make a choice: escape the flames or try to get the babies out.

Noreen, 38, rushed into the nursery at the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS) and managed to carry out one infant, a 1,050-gram baby dependent on oxygen support. She tried to return for the others, but said an explosion, intense heat and thick smoke made it impossible to re-enter.

Fourteen newborns died in the blaze.

The Pakistani government has since honored Noreen for her bravery and awarded her Rs10 million ($36,000) but the health care worker said the recognition meant little compared with the lives she could not save.

“Has any mother ever saved a child with the expectation of getting a reward? I didn’t do anyone a favor. I saved those babies as a mother,” she told Arab News in an interview at PIMS this week. “I wanted to save all the babies but I couldn’t. I could only save one.”

Noreen recounted that the fire broke out early that Wednesday at the Mother and Child Hospital at PIMS as she was preparing the newborns’ daily medication.

“As I closed the cupboard, I saw fire right in front of me … what came to my mind were two things, either save yourself or save the babies,” she said. “It was a matter of just two seconds.”

Noreen grabbed the underweight infant, identified at the hospital as “Baby of Asifa,” who was connected to medical equipment, and carried the child into the corridor. She handed the baby to colleagues and told them to rush the infant to the neonatal intensive care unit.

Noreen then turned back toward the nursery with duty doctor Dr. Rimsha in an attempt to rescue more children.

“As I came back from outside and was about to re-enter, a blast occurred,” Noreen said. “Dr. Rimsha and I tried our absolute best, we turned on our mobile flashlights, stayed low to the ground, thinking that even if something happened to us, we must save the babies.”

But she said the heat and smoke had become too intense for them to get back inside.

“Going inside was simply impossible because of the fire, the fire and the smoke were so intense,” she said. “Look at the time on the video: at 6:38... and by 6:39, everything had blasted. The time was that short.”

Noreen said evacuating babies from a nursery was particularly difficult because many were connected to equipment including continuous positive airway pressure, or CPAP, machines, breathing tubes and infusion pumps.

Recalling the moment she saw the flames, she said her instinct was to choose the babies over her own safety.

“And what does a mother do?” she said. “She never cares about herself, she saves her child. I jumped inside for my children too.”

She said the newborns had been entrusted to the nurses, who fed them, changed their diapers, administered medication and monitored their oxygen, taking on responsibilities their mothers had not yet been able to perform.

“Those weren’t just other people’s children,” she said. “Those people had entrusted them to us.”

For her, that responsibility made the relationship between nurse and newborn maternal.

“As a nurse, when people leave a child in the nursery, the nurse is the first mother,” she said. “The nurse is the first mother and I was their first mother.”

‘I HAVEN’T SLEPT’

The fire has raised questions about safety standards at the government-run hospital. A subsequent fire incident report by Islamabad’s Capital Development Authority cited inadequate and non-standard fire and life-safety arrangements and said some exits were locked or obstructed. PIMS officials have disputed that exits were locked during the blaze.

Noreen said staff were present at the time and maintained that the doors were unlocked, but acknowledged the nursery lacked a fire alarm system.

“It’s true that we should have had alarms, but it comes down to the fact that this was an old facility built by the Japanese and there was no alarm system installed there,” she said, adding that access to the nursery was controlled to guard against the risk of infant abductions.

For Noreen, however, the questions surrounding the fire have done little to ease the memories of the children she could not reach.

“I haven’t slept since that night,” she said. “I take sleeping pills but even with medication, I can’t sleep. All day in the office, and after coming here, I try to sleep, but my eyes snap open.”

Noreen, whose sister also works as a nurse at a hospital in Karachi, said she drew inspiration from Florence Nightingale and her faith and urged younger health care workers to approach their profession with the same sense of responsibility.

Noreen said she had not contacted the family of the baby she rescued because she did not want recognition for what she considered simply her responsibility as a nurse.

But she hoped the family would one day learn who had carried their child out of the burning nursery.

“They will realize on their own,” Noreen said with a smile, “that the ‘Baby of Asifa’ has another mother and that is Miss Razia Noreen.”