‘I could not save the rest’: Hero nurse remembers Pakistan’s nursery fire

The PIMS nurse who saved one newborn recalls the fire, the screams and the 14 babies she could not save.

Staff nurse Razia Noreen at PIMS in Islamabad, eight days after the fire, on Thursday, September 3, 2026 [Abid Hussain/Al Jazeera]

Islamabad, Pakistan – Staff nurse Razia Noreen was at a medicine cupboard on the nursery ward of the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS), Islamabad’s largest public-sector hospital. She was two doors from the babies in her care, preparing the morning’s injections.

As she shut the cupboard door, she saw through the nursery’s glass panel a light too sharp and too red to be anything ordinary. She did not wait to understand what it was.

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It was 6:38am on Wednesday, August 26 . Elsewhere in the ward, her colleague, Sister Nasreen, was already running out, shouting for help.

At 56 seconds past 6:38am, according to security camera timestamps later logged by a government inquiry committee, Noreen rushed into the nursery.

Eight seconds later, she emerged carrying a baby. She tried to go back in. She could not. By 6:40am, the room was gone, swallowed by smoke so thick that the security cameras could no longer see through it.

Noreen was recalling this eight days later, in a plain office beside the hostel warden’s room at PIMS, dressed in a pale pink shalwar kameez, her dupatta loose over one shoulder.

“There was a proper blast,” she told Al Jazeera. “Everything turned to smoke.”

Fifteen newborns had been in that nursery. Fourteen died. The baby Noreen carried out was the only one who lived.

On Thursday, Noreen was given an award by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif for her courage. But for the nurse, the trauma of that Wednesday morning was still raw.

Barely two hours after meeting the prime minister, she sat down and talked, at length, about what happened inside.

Rescue workers had to break the concrete grill and then a window to gain access to the ward [Abid Hussain/Al Jazeera]

Noreen had been on duty since 8pm the previous night, working a routine dawn medication round with Sister Nasreen, with less than two hours left before the end of her shift.

When she saw the light through the nursery glass, she says she did not stop to work out what it was.

“I just told my sister nurse, save the babies,” she told Al Jazeera. “I went in. I didn’t think about what would happen next.”

Noreen said the fire was coming out of the side of the air-conditioning unit facing her.

“The AC was right in front of me, and the fire was coming out of its side,” she said. “We don’t know what was happening behind it. That’s just what I saw.”

The government’s interim inquiry , submitted on August 28, states that the precise cause of the fire “is not yet conclusively established”, with evidence pointing variously to the air conditioner, an incubator or an electrical short circuit.

Inside the nursery, Noreen reached the nearest baby. There was no time to choose between 15. She carried the infant out and handed her to Dr Abdul Rehman, a doctor who had been inserting a feeding tube in the next room and emerged into the corridor moments after her. Then she turned back.

“I thought I’d get five, six, seven, eight more of them out,” she said. “But the fire was moving faster than I was.”

A second doctor, Dr Rimsha, who had been doing rounds nearby and saw the same light Noreen had, followed her in.

The two of them, and later Sister Nasreen, tried to crawl back through the smoke below the worst of the heat. A sudden loss of power plunged the room into darkness. They could not get through.

Noreen’s phone, left behind on the medication table when she ran in, sat inside the burned ward overnight. Hospital guards found it and returned it to her the next afternoon. Its case is still scorched and cracked.

Noreen, Dr Rimsha and Sister Nasreen instead moved to where a separate rescue team was lowering babies from an adjoining gynaecology ward. They stood there catching newborns and running them to the neonatal intensive care unit until the smoke became too thick to remain.

The government’s inquiry later found that the available evidence “does not support generalised allegations that front-line medical and nursing staff simply abandoned the newborns”.

Ask Noreen what a nurse is to a newborn separated from its mother, and she has one answer: its first mother.

“A mother who gives birth endures a pain no one else can stand in for,” she said. “But once a baby is in our hands, no one else is watching over it the way we are, checking their oxygen, their feeding, whether they’re breathing right, every two hours, whatever else is happening around us. That is why we are their first mother.”

Noreen’s phone, left behind in the nursery during the fire. Hospital guards recovered it and returned it to her the next day [Abid Hussain/Al Jazeera]

‘I am very happy with the children’

Noreen, 38, has spent 21 years in government nursing, the last 17 of them at PIMS. She trained in Karachi right after school, at the age of 17, before a transfer brought her to PIMS in 2009. She has never married.

“Thank God, I am very happy with the children,” she said, when asked about it directly.

Born in Punjab’s city of Sahiwal, she was one of seven children. Her father, Victor John, was a pastor; he died when she was in the eighth grade. Two of her sisters have died; a third, also a nurse, lives in Lahore.

Her mother, 83, a retired government school teacher who is hard of hearing, lives in Lahore with one of Noreen’s brothers.

Noreen herself has lived in the PIMS staff hostel, across from the ward where she works, for most of the past two decades.

With her own phone trapped inside the burning ward, Noreen could not call her family herself.

Noreen’s niece happened to be staying with her that week. It was the niece the warden found, and who got word to the family in Lahore: Noreen was safe.

‘It’s always the two of us’

On the morning of the fire, Noreen and Sister Nasreen were the only two nurses on duty in a nursery holding 15 babies, backed by two doctors, one of them two rooms away. She says it was not an unusual night.

“Sometimes there are 20 babies, sometimes 25,” she said. “It’s always the two of us.”

Doctors on her ward work 36-hour shifts, she said, arriving at 8am and going off duty at 2pm the following day.

Handover between nursing shifts, checking each baby’s medication, feeding and vital signs, takes roughly 45 minutes given the numbers involved. The cost of drugs can also run to tens of thousands of Pakistani rupees per injection, all provided by PIMS to its patients.

“Sometimes we get a break, sometimes we don’t,” she said. “When the workload is heavy, even the water we carry with us goes back home untouched.”

No fire drill had been run in the nursery before August 26, not even after an earlier fire at a nearby PIMS hostel in July.

Asked what is required after an incident like this, she does not hesitate.

“We should all have proper drills. If a fire starts, everyone needs to already know what to do.”

She lists what should follow: extinguishers within reach, cross-ventilation to clear smoke, and a rehearsed evacuation route for babies who cannot walk or call out for help.

Broken windows at the PIMS building housing the nursery, hours after the August 26 fire [Abid Hussain/Al Jazeera]

‘Golden letters in history’

Until the fire, almost nobody outside her own ward knew her name, Noreen says.

“I have almost no presence in the main hospital,” she said. “Nobody there knows who I am. I work in the nursery, in my own department. I never imagined that saving one baby would take me this far.”

She travelled on Thursday to meet the prime minister in a car the government sent.

During the meeting, Sharif called her “the nation’s daughter” and said her act would be remembered “in golden letters” in Pakistan’s history.

He confirmed Noreen will formally receive the country’s Sitara-i-Khidmat (Star of Service) award at a ceremony on March 23, and handed her a cheque for 10 million Pakistani rupees ($36,000).

She used the meeting to say what she had already told her own colleagues privately.

“My fellow nurses work with just as much dedication,” she said. “This was a very heartbreaking incident.”

‘I haven’t slept since that day’

Eight days on, Noreen is unwell. She has had a fever of 102 to 103 degrees Fahrenheit (38.9C to 39.4C) on and off, and a cough she says came from smoke she breathed in from the fire that morning — a morning she will never forget. She takes an antibiotic and sleeping tablets at night. Neither has worked as it should.

“I haven’t slept, not since that day,” she said. “I take the tablets, I drink the cough syrup, but sleep doesn’t come. I close my eyes, and I open them again.”

Asked whether the same dawn shift keeps replaying in her mind, she did not need the question finished.

“The whole incident. The same babies. The mothers’ screams, and the babies’ screams, how they must have screamed. Those are the things that don’t let me sleep.”

She was signed off on medical rest only the day before this interview. Colleagues have been steadying her since.

“I would just start crying, sitting there,” she said. “They supported me like I was a child.”

But the nights are still hers alone.

“It comes back to the same thing,” she said. “When I’m in the hostel, when I’m alone, it all comes back.”

Nurse Razia Noreen meets Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif in Islamabad on September 3, 2026, where he presented her with a cheque for 10 million Pakistani rupees ($36,000) and announced she will receive the Sitara-i-Khidmat (Star of Service) civil award [Handout/Pakistan Prime Minister’s Office]

The baby Noreen carried out — she hasn’t been named yet, according to the nurse — remains in the neonatal intensive care unit a week on.

Born preterm at just over a kilogramme (2 pounds, 3 ounces), the baby was already unwell before the fire. She remains critical.

Noreen met the baby’s parents for the first time the day before the meeting with the prime minister.

“She [the baby’s mother Asifa] hugged me and thanked me, and cried, and I cried with her,” Noreen said, “because for the rest of the children, my heart is still exactly where it was.”

She has told the mother the same thing she tells herself.

“I said, look, your child survived such a huge storm, she will survive what comes next, too. You pray, and I will pray.”

Asked what she would tell other nurses, Noreen urged them to work with honesty and without conditions.

“When you work somewhere with honesty, the reward comes eventually,” she said. “It came to me after 21 years. Work with the same loyalty. That is our real strength.”

Then, unprompted, she returned to the 14 babies who died.

“I do regret it,” she said. “I could not save the rest of the children. That, I regret.”

PIMS 的一名护士救下了一名新生儿，她回忆起那场火灾、尖叫声以及她没能救下的 14 个婴儿。

2026年9月3日星期四，伊斯兰堡PIMS医院的护士Razia Noreen在火灾发生八天后接受治疗。[Abid Hussain/半岛电视台]

巴基斯坦伊斯兰堡——在伊斯兰堡最大的公立医院——巴基斯坦医学科学研究所（PIMS）的婴儿病房里，护士拉齐亚·诺琳正在药柜旁。她离她照顾的婴儿们只有两扇门之隔，正在准备早上要注射的药物。

她关上橱柜门时，透过婴儿房的玻璃面板，看到一道过于刺眼、过于鲜红的光芒，绝非寻常之物。她没等弄明白那是什么，就立刻关上了橱柜门。

列表 1/3 困于其中：巴基斯坦医院火灾致 14 名新生儿丧生，悲痛与愤怒交织

列表 2/3：巴基斯坦医院育婴室火灾致至少 14 名婴儿死亡

巴基斯坦因医院火灾导致14名婴儿死亡，暂停8名官员的职务（共3条，此为第3条）。

那是 8 月 26 日星期三早上 6 点 38 分。在病房的另一边，她的同事纳斯琳修女已经跑了出来，大声呼救。

根据政府调查委员会后来记录的监控录像时间戳，早上 6 点 38 分 56 秒，诺琳冲进了育婴室。

八秒钟后，她抱着一个婴儿走了出来。她试图再次进入房间，但失败了。到了早上6点40分，房间已经消失，被浓烟吞噬，监控摄像头也无法看清里面的情况。

八天后，诺琳在PIMS宿舍管理员房间旁边的一间简朴办公室里回忆起这件事。她穿着浅粉色的沙尔瓦卡米兹，披肩松松地搭在一侧肩膀上。

她告诉半岛电视台：“当时发生了剧烈的爆炸，一切都化为乌有。”

那间育婴室里曾有十五个新生儿，十四个夭折了。诺琳抱出来的那个婴儿是唯一活下来的。

周四，诺琳因其勇气获得了总理谢赫巴兹·谢里夫的嘉奖。但对这位护士来说，周三早上的那场创伤仍然历历在目。

与首相会面不到两个小时后，她就坐下来详细地讲述了里面发生的事情。

救援人员不得不打破混凝土栅栏，然后撬开窗户才能进入病房。[阿比德·侯赛因/半岛电视台]

诺琳从前一天晚上 8 点就开始值班，和纳斯琳护士长一起进行例行的黎明药物巡视，距离下班时间只剩下不到两个小时了。

她说，当她透过婴儿房的玻璃看到光线时，她并没有停下来思考那是什么。

“我当时就跟我的护士姐姐说，救救这些孩子，”她告诉半岛电视台。“我冲了进去。我根本没想过接下来会发生什么。”

诺琳说，火是从正对着她的那一侧的空调机里冒出来的。

“空调就在我眼前，火是从空调侧面冒出来的，”她说。“我们不知道空调后面发生了什么。我只看到了这些。”

政府于 8 月 28 日提交的临时调查报告指出，火灾的确切原因“尚未最终确定”，证据指向空调、保温箱或电路短路等不同原因。

在育婴室里，诺琳走到离她最近的婴儿身边。她根本没时间在15个婴儿中挑选。她抱着婴儿走了出去，交给了阿卜杜勒·拉赫曼医生。拉赫曼医生刚才在隔壁房间给婴儿插喂食管，几分钟后也从走廊走了出来。然后，她转身走了回去。

“我以为我还能救出五六个、七八个，”她说。“但火势蔓延的速度比我快得多。”

第二位医生，里姆沙医生，当时正在附近巡诊，也看到了和诺琳一样的光芒，于是跟着她走了进来。

他们两人，以及后来的纳斯琳修女，试图爬过烟雾最浓的地方，避开最热的区域。突然停电，房间陷入一片黑暗。他们无法穿过黑暗。

诺琳冲进病房时把手机落在了配药台上，手机在烧毁的病房里待了一夜。第二天下午，医院保安找到了手机并还给了她。手机壳至今仍被烧焦开裂。

诺琳、里姆莎医生和纳斯琳护士转而前往另一支救援队所在的位置，该救援队正在隔壁的妇产科病房里放下婴儿。她们站在那里接住新生儿，并将他们送往新生儿重症监护室，直到烟雾太浓无法继续停留。

政府的调查后来发现，现有证据“不支持一线医护人员随意遗弃新生儿的普遍指控”。

问诺琳，护士对于与母亲分离的新生儿来说意味着什么，她只有一个答案：那就是新生儿的亲生母亲。

“分娩的母亲承受着无人能及的痛苦，”她说。“但一旦婴儿来到我们身边，没有人会像我们一样照看他们，每隔两小时检查他们的血氧饱和度、喂养情况、呼吸是否正常，以及周围发生的一切。这就是为什么我们是他们的第一个母亲。”

诺琳的手机在火灾中遗留在育婴室。医院保安人员找到了手机，并在第二天归还给了她。[阿比德·侯赛因/半岛电视台]

“我对孩子们非常满意。”

38岁的诺琳在政府部门从事护理工作21年，其中17年在巴基斯坦医学科学研究所（PIMS）工作。她17岁中学毕业后就在卡拉奇接受培训，2009年因调动来到PIMS。她从未结婚。

当被直接问及此事时，她说：“感谢上帝，我非常爱我的孩子们。”

她出生于旁遮普邦的萨希瓦尔市，家中排行老七。她的父亲维克多·约翰是一位牧师，在她读八年级时去世。她的两个姐姐已经去世；第三个姐姐也是一名护士，住在拉合尔。

她的母亲今年 83 岁，是一位退休的公立学校教师，听力不好，和诺琳的一个兄弟住在拉合尔。

在过去的二十年里，诺琳本人大部分时间都住在PIMS员工宿舍，就在她工作的病房对面。

诺琳自己的手机被困在燃烧的病房里，她无法亲自给家人打电话。

诺琳的侄女恰好在那周和她住在一起。狱警找到了这位侄女，并把消息告诉了在拉合尔的家人：诺琳平安无事。

“总是我们两个人。”

火灾发生的那天早上，诺琳和纳斯琳修女是育婴室里仅有的两名值班护士，育婴室里有15个婴儿，还有两名医生在岗，其中一名医生在隔壁两个房间。她说，那晚一切如常。

“有时候有20个婴儿，有时候有25个，”她说。“但总是我们两个人。”

她说，她所在病房的医生实行 36 小时轮班制，早上 8 点上班，第二天下午 2 点下班。

由于涉及的婴儿数量众多，护士交班时，检查每个婴儿的用药、喂养情况和生命体征大约需要45分钟。此外，每针药物的费用可能高达数万巴基斯坦卢比，所有药物均由巴基斯坦医学科学研究所（PIMS）提供给患者。

“有时候我们能休息一下，有时候则不行，”她说。“工作量大的时候，就连我们随身携带的水都一口也不用动。”

在 8 月 26 日之前，该托儿所从未进行过消防演习，即使在 7 月份附近 PIMS 宿舍发生火灾之后也没有进行过。

当被问及发生此类事件后需要做什么时，她毫不犹豫地回答。

“我们都应该进行正规的演习。如果发生火灾，每个人都需要事先知道该怎么做。”

她列出了接下来应该采取的措施：触手可及的灭火器、交叉通风以清除烟雾，以及为不会走路或不会呼救的婴儿制定的演练疏散路线。

8月26日火灾发生数小时后，PIMS大楼（内设托儿所）的窗户破碎。[Abid Hussain/半岛电视台]

“历史上的金字”

诺琳说，直到那场火灾发生之前，除了她所在的病房外，几乎没有人知道她的名字。

“我在主院区几乎没有存在感，”她说。“那里没人认识我。我在新生儿病房工作，在我自己负责的科室。我从没想过救一个婴儿会让我走到今天这一步。”

周四，她乘坐政府派出的汽车前往会见首相。

会面期间，谢里夫称她为“国家的女儿”，并表示她的行为将“以金字铭刻”在巴基斯坦的历史上。

他确认诺琳将于 3 月 23 日的仪式上正式获得该国的“服务之星”奖，并向她递交了一张 1000 万巴基斯坦卢比（36000 美元）的支票。

她利用这次会议，把她之前私下里已经告诉同事们的事情说了出来。

“我的同事们也同样尽心尽力，”她说。“这起事件令人非常痛心。”

“从那天起，我就没睡过觉。”

八天过去了，诺琳的身体仍然不舒服。她断断续续地发烧，体温在华氏102度到103度（摄氏38.9度到39.4度）之间，咳嗽也是因为那天早上吸入了火灾产生的烟雾——那是一个她永远不会忘记的早晨。她服用抗生素，晚上服用安眠药，但都没有起到应有的效果。

“从那天起，我就没睡过觉，”她说。“我吃了药，喝了止咳糖浆，但就是睡不着。我闭上眼睛，又睁开。”

当被问及同样的黎明班次是否在她脑海中不断重现时，她不需要对方把问题说完。

“整件事。同样的婴儿。母亲们的尖叫声，婴儿们的尖叫声，他们当时该有多么凄厉的尖叫。这些都让我彻夜难眠。”

就在采访前一天，她才被医生批准休病假。此后，同事们一直在照顾她。

“我坐在那里就会哭，”她说。“他们像对待孩子一样照顾我。”

但夜晚依然只属于她一个人。

“最终还是老样子，”她说。“当我在旅舍里，当我独自一人时，所有的事情都会再次浮现。”

2026年9月3日，护士拉齐亚·诺琳在伊斯兰堡会见了总理谢赫巴兹·谢里夫，谢里夫向她赠送了一张1000万巴基斯坦卢比（约合3.6万美元）的支票，并宣布她将获得“服务之星”（Sitara-i-Khidmat）公民奖章。[巴基斯坦总理办公室供图]

据护士说，诺琳生下的婴儿——还没有取名字——一周过去了，仍然在新生儿重症监护室里。

这个婴儿早产，出生时体重仅略超过一公斤（2磅3盎司），在火灾发生前就已经体弱多病。目前她的情况仍然危急。

在与首相会面的前一天，诺琳第一次见到了孩子的父母。

“她（婴儿的母亲阿西法）拥抱了我，感谢我，哭了，我也跟着她哭了，”诺琳说，“因为对于其他孩子，我的心仍然和以前一样牵挂着。”

她对母亲说的话，和她对自己说的话一样。

我说，你看，你的孩子能挺过这么大的风暴，她也能挺过接下来的难关。你祈祷，我也会祈祷。

当被问及她会给其他护士什么建议时，诺琳敦促她们诚实无私地工作。

“只要你诚实地工作，最终就会得到回报，”她说。“我工作了21年才得到回报。要始终保持忠诚，这才是我们真正的力量。”

然后，她主动回到了那14个夭折的婴儿身边。

“我真的很后悔，”她说。“我没能救下其他孩子。对此，我深感遗憾。”