Good afternoon. The safe evacuation of all 22 patients from Maputo Central Hospital’s oncology service deserves recognition. Faced with smoke, flames and reported explosions on Sunday morning, hospital staff prevented the destruction of an important medical facility from becoming a human catastrophe.

That success should not obscure the central question. How did a fire grow large enough to destroy much of a relatively recently renovated building providing some of the country’s scarcest medical services?

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The immediate cause remains unknown. It would be irresponsible to blame an electrical fault, negligence or deliberate action before investigators have established the facts. But uncertainty about how the fire started does not prevent scrutiny of the systems intended to detect and contain it.

Reports indicate that a nurse raised the alarm at around 07:10 after smelling smoke. Investigators must establish whether automatic detectors and alarms were installed, operational and heard throughout the building. They should also determine whether the electrical system had been inspected, whether fire doors or other barriers contained the flames and whether staff had functioning equipment with which to respond.