A total of 43 people were in the two-story building, in the town of Daraganovka, when the fire started early Friday. It was put out two and a half hours later.
The southern department of the Emergency Situations Ministry said 135 breaches of fire regulations were discovered during an inspection at the hospital last October and December, and five executives brought to account. The hospital's management has been fined three times.
The department also said a fire drill had been held in the 115 year-old wooden-floor building last November.
A criminal investigation has been launched. The preliminary cause of the fire has been put down to negligence.
It was the latest in a string of fires that have hit medical institutions in Russia over the past few months. A fire in an old people's home took the lives of 63 people in a small town in the Krasnodar Territory, southern Russia in March. Breaches in fire prevention measures were officially declared the cause of the tragedy.
In December, a fire in a Moscow addiction clinic killed 46 people, and another 10 were killed in a fire in a psychiatric and neurological clinic in the Kemerovo Region in Russia's southwestern Siberia.
