Dengue patients throng hospitals all night

It was 11:15 Wednesday night and two women were sitting in the reception of Holy Family Hospital in the capital city, anxiously tending to an infant. They said the baby had dengue and was being treated at a different clinic, but when her platelet count fell to just 25,000, they rushed to this hospital as the clinic lacked the facilities to deal with the case.

The infant was lucky enough to be able to get admitted there, unlike little Sumaiya who couldn’t be admitted to Dhaka Shishu Hospital. Her father Forkan, a day labourer from Mohammadpur in the capital, said four-year-old Sumaiya had been suffering from fever for two days and was brought to Shishu Hospital on Wednesday night. He had been sent from one overcrowded room to the other with his daughter at the hospital’s emergency unit and finally, after one and a half hours, his daughter received attention. Her blood test showed positive for dengue but there was no room for her in the hospital and so Forkan had to take her daughter back home.

These two incidents reveal the state of the emergency departments at the city’s hospitals all through the night. Five correspondents of Prothom Alo visited Dhaka Medical College, Sir Salimullah Medical College Hospital (Mitford Hospital), Shaheed Suhrawardy Medical College Hospital, Dhaka Shishu Hospital and Holy Family Red Crescent Medical College Hospital on Wednesday night, staying at the emergency departments from 9:00pm till 12:30am.

The emergency departments were overflowing with patients. The physicians were under tremendous pressure. They said almost all those who were coming late at night were dengue patients and mostly poor.

In these two and a half hours at the five hospitals, at least 270 patients were treated. Most of them were affected with dengue. Some managed to get admitted, while others had to try their luck at different hospitals. Others simply returned home.

Even after midnight there was a long line of patients with their families at the Mitford Hospital. At 11:00pm, there were around 22 patients waiting in line at the Shishu Hospital. New patients were still arriving.

At midnight patients still were arriving at Suhrawardy Hospital. An internee physician at the hospital said that normally only Dhaka Medical College’s emergency department saw such a large number of patients so late at night. But, over the past couple of weeks, this hospital was under such pressure too.

At midnight, an infant was brought to Holy Family Hospital but had to be rushed by ambulance to a different hospital as there was no Paediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) there.

A relative of the infant, Pulak Chandra Bhadra, said the child, 9-year-old Arghya Dutta, was from Lohagora, Narail. He had been taken with fever to the Narail upazila hospital and then to Narail Sadar and then on to Jessore Sadar Hospital. Then he was brought to Dhaka. A physician on duty at Holy Family’s emergency department HN Ashiqur Rahman said that the child was in a bad condition but couldn’t be admitted there as they had no PICU.

When security guard Suman arrived at Dhaka Shishu Hospital from Kazipara with his 23-month-old infant, it was nearly 10:00 at night. He had to wait for an hour before the physician could attend to his child. The physician said the child needed to be admitted to hospital but there was no space there and so Suman rushed off to Suhrawardy Hospital to see if he could find a place there.

CNG-run auto-rickshaw driver Hanif arrived at Shishu Hospital with his ailing wife and child at 9:30pm. The hospital doesn’t treat adults and so he had to take them to Suhrawardy Hospital.

Nazrul, who runs a tea-stall, was distraught. Sitting in the veranda of Suhrawardy Hospital at 11:00 in the night, he lamented, “My 12-year-old son has been suffering from fever for three days. He can’t eat and keeps vomiting. Mirpur’s Shishu Hospital diagnosed him with dengue. I have brought him here to get admitted at Suhrawardy Hospital, but the doctor said they only admit patients who are bleeding through their nose and mouth. So how bad does a patient’s condition have to be to get admitted?”

Dengue patient Sabita Sen was under treatment for four days at Dhaka National Medical Hospital and shifted from there to Mitford Hospital at 11:30 Wednesday night. She was admitted there, but had to lay her bedding on the floor as there were no vacant beds. There were many patients similarly lying on the floor.

At midnight, day labourer Billal, lying in the veranda of Suhrawardy Hospital, spoke to the Prothom Alo correspondent. He had come from Dhanmondi and had been in the veranda of the hospital for the past four days.