Bangladesh’s largest public hospital, Dhaka Medical College Hospital (DMCH), is operating at five to six times its designed capacity, forcing patients to lie on mats on stairwells, in corridors, and alongside toilet blocks while receiving treatment.
A reporter’s visit on Thursday morning found at least 45 patients lying on mats on either side of the stretcher-access staircase just inside the hospital’s emergency department, accompanied by their relatives. The same scene was visible from the ground floor to the third floor. On the second floor, patients in the neurosurgery ward had taken up space on both sides of the toilet block. Dirty water from the lavatories, bin waste, mud, garbage and rainwater were pooling into the areas where they lay.
The conditions in the children’s ward were equally stark. Room 207 on the second floor, which has 18 beds, had 115 children admitted; room 208, with 19 beds, had 91 children; and room 210, with 14 beds, had 82. Each room is admitting between five and six times its designated number of patients. The children are being treated for measles, pneumonia, dengue, respiratory distress, diarrhoea and kidney conditions, among others, leaving families distraught.
According to the reporter’s observations, people travel to DMCH daily from across the country as a last resort for treatment they cannot obtain elsewhere. The extreme patient load has left no space in any ward. Patients are receiving care on floors, in corridors, on staircase landings and beside toilet facilities. Beds and food-storage drawers were found to be infested with cockroaches and bedbugs. The basins and washrooms were described as carrying an odour so strong that visitors and patients covered their mouths and noses before approaching them.
Wards were littered with tissues, cotton wool, scraps of paper, water bottles, rubbish-filled plastic bags and fruit peel. Walls were stained with spittle and betel juice. Dustbins were overflowing, with flies and mosquitoes concentrated around them. The same conditions extended to the outpatient and emergency departments and ticket counters throughout the hospital.
বাংলায় মূল প্রতিবেদন পড়ুন · Read the original Bengali report