More than one thousand dengue patients were taking treatment at different hospitals in Dhaka and elsewhere on Tuesday morning as the situation has been worsening for the last few days.

At least 264 more dengue cases were hospitalised in the 24-hour period till Tuesday morning with 16 of them outside the capital, said a press release of the Directorate General of Health Services.

It said that a total of 1,072 patients were undergoing treatment at various hospitals in Dhaka and 47 in other places than Dhaka.

Of the hospitalised dengue cases, 277 were at public hospitals in the capital with 161 at Mitford Hospital, 57 at the Combined Military Hospital, 38 at Dhaka Shishu Hospital and 16 at Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University.

 
Mitford Hospital is treating the highest number of dengue patients where officials said that infection in children was a major concern for the hospital with more than half the patients at the paediatric ward were suffering from dengue.

The hospital authorities said that they were grappling with the surging number of dengue patients as some public hospitals were not treating these patients. 

As of Tuesday morning, at least 3,446 people with dengue were treated at hospitals in 2021, said a DGHS press release.

The country’s dengue situation, especially in the capital city, has worsened since the beginning of July with 2,286 dengue carriers hospitalised in the month amid a surge in Covid infections.

Over half of the dengue patients at Mitford Hospital are female and children with some of them in a critical condition, said hospital officials.

Patients said that the hospital did not have sufficient number of doctors and nurses to look after them.

The hospital’s assistant register Mizanur Rahman said that 60–70 patients were getting admitted daily to the facility in recent days while the hospital’s medicine ward was struggling to cope with such number of patients.

He said that 161 dengue patients, including 36 children, were being treated at the hospital as of Tuesday afternoon.

The children were at the paediatric ward while the others were at the medicine ward.

According to hospital officials, there were currently some 65 children at the paediatric ward and 36 of them were suffering from dengue.

The hospital’s medicine ward can accommodate nearly 500 patients but as the number of dengue patients is increasing it is getting difficult to admit them all, said Mizanur.

He said that as some major public hospitals in the capital were dedicated to Covid treatment, dengue patients were constantly rushing to Mitford Hospital.

Meanwhile, some hospitalised patients alleged that hospital doctors and staff were forcing them to have their tests done at nearby private clinics and diagnostic centres.

Fashion designer Nasir Mridha has been undergoing treatment at the hospital for dengue infection since Thursday.

Nasir said that he wanted to have his medical tests carried out at the hospital, but doctors and staff insisted that these should be conducted at private facilities because it might take days to get the test results at Mitford Hospital.

‘I had to go to Popular Diagnostic Centre for my tests, where they cost around Tk 4,000. It would have been much cheaper had these been carried out at Mitford Hospital,’ said Nasir.

He further said that there were only three nurses for over 100 dengue patients and hence they could not attend to the patients timely and properly.

Nahian Bin Ziaul, 16, was admitted to the hospital on Friday night as he had been suffering from high fever since July 26.

Nahian’s mother Nazmun Nahar said that they were handed down slips instructing where to go for medical tests.

‘We had to go to Medinova Medical Services Limited for the tests they advised as they told us to do these there. The staff said that we could not have the tests done in Mitford Hospital and needed to go to Medinova,’ said Nahar.

Asked, assistant register Mizanur said that they had testing equipment and facilities but it took 12–14 hours to get the results whereas it took three–four hours at private facilities.