MANILA, May 16: Fire swept through a Philippine government hospital in Manila early on Saturday and killed at least 11 patients on life support, according to officials who refused to rule out arson.Six other patients at the intensive care unit of the lung centre were missing and feared dead. The blaze raged in one section of the three-storey suburban Manila building for nearly eight hours.Health Secretary Carmencita Reodica said it was doubtful any of the missing had survived. Reodica said four other patients died shortly after the blaze broke out at 2 am while one died after being taken to a nearby hospital."Four of them were hooked on respirators. They expired when the fire caused a power outage," she said. Most of these patients were critically ill, she added.A fireman told AFP he had seen six bodies inside the hospital as colleagues brought one out of the building in a body bag. He said there was no sign of survivors.A total of 160 other patients were transferred to four otherhospitals.Reodica initially said there were more than 200 patients under the hospital's care but later revised the figure to about 180.The fire also affected an adjacent state-run hospital, the National Kidney Institute, where a laboratory was destroyed by the fire.Its patients were taken by stretcher out into the lobby and courtyard after smoke penetrated the building, hospital staff said.Reodica said investigators were called in to determine whether the hospital was deliberately set ablaze but later added that talk about possible arson was just speculation at this time.Fire official Aurelio Tumbaga said the blaze broke out in a central area of the second floor. The cause had not been established but fire inspectors were inside the building to gather evidence, he said.A doctors' group, the Alliance of Health Workers, believes the fire was linked to the government's plan to sell the hospital to the private sector, the alliance's president Emma Manuel said over radio station DZRH.Reodicaconfirmed the planned auction, saying it was being met with opposition by some groups she did not identify.The Lung Center, set up by former first lady Imelda Marcos in the 1970s, specializes in respiratory diseases and sits on a sprawling lot in the northern Manila suburb of Quezon.Manuel said many of the patients are indigents.Small groups of distraught relatives waited in the driveway as firemen milled about. All ambulances in Manila were mobilized and all hospitals were ordered to take in displaced patients, Reodica said.The minister snapped when an aide informed her that one private hospital was demanding written authorization to take in some of the patients. "This is an emergency," she barked to the aide on her mobile phone.
