Noman Mosharef :
Widespread fear of the coronavirus transmission is still preventing people from seeking medical care in hospitals.
Doctors said the regular patients have almost stopped coming to the hospitals due to fear of being infected with coronavirus. People seeking medical care only when in critical condition. But they said doing so could be deadly.
“There are deceasing numbers of patients at the hospitals. Fear of coronavirus keeps people away from medical care,” said public health expert Dr ABM Abdullah, adding, “Besides, negligence and mismanagement at hospitals also forced many patients stay at home.”
He said even the dedicated Covid hospitals in Dhaka reported a significant drop in patient volume. That means people are waiting too long to seek medical treatment — even including those infected with the coronavirus.
Meanwhile, Bangladesh Medical Association (BMA) disclosed information that 64 doctors had died with covid-19 till July 15 while 1,953 had infected. BMA further said, 1,504 nurses and 2100 others health staff have infected with novel coronavirus.
Dr. Md. Ehteshamul Huq Choudhury, BMA’s Secretary General said, the hospitals became the hotspots of covid-19 from the early stage of virus infection. But the health staffers are providing treatment to the patients with their will-power. He also blamed the triage system. This system is used by individuals to determine which group of the patients should receive treatment and care services based on their clinical status, the prognosis of disease and available resources. Hiding information by the patients and insufficient safety measures of the health staffers spread covid-19 at hospitals.
Dr AKM Mamun Morshed, Assistant Director of Shaheed Suhrawardy Medical College and Hospital said that the OPD patients have decreased. Before pandemic about four to five thousand patients had visited, now it is 500 to 600.
When asked about the smaller number of the patients, he said, hospitals are the breeding ground of coronavirus. All kind of health staffers are getting infection by the deadly virus. At the moment very important thing is to reduce the people’s fear about corona transmission at hospitals.
The Assistant Director said, we have arranged 200 beds in indoor for covid-19 patients and 650 beds for others. On 12 July, 116 people were admitted to the hospital for covid beds and 648 for non-covid beds. Total admission is 764 people. Earlier, the bed were used to accommodate 1,300 to 1,500 patients.
On the same day, 552 people came to the outdoor department, 248 to the emergency department and 61 people came to the flu corner, said Dr. Mamun.
The reason for this, he said that people are not coming to the hospital for fear, secondly, most of the people who used to seek treatment in government hospitals have left Dhaka. However, the number of patients has been increasing day by day since July 8.
Shaheed Suhrawardy Hospital started admission of covid-19 patients from June 27, he mentioned.
