Timely treatment can save lives
Physicians believe timely medical intervention can save three-fourths of the lives lost in suicides as the phenomenon of taking one's own life showed an upward trend lately.
Psychologists have listed causes behind the rise in the number of people ending their lives. Remedies for preventing suicide are numerous and diverse depending on the victims' socio-economic conditions.
But the bottom line drawn by physicians and psychologists is that the self-killing attempts can be prevented by counselling and providing medical treatment in time.
Surprisingly, in Dhaka, a city of 13 million people, only three of the 25 public health facilities treat patients who attempt suicide. The hospitals are Dhaka Medical College Hospital, Shaheed Suhrawardy Medical College Hospital and Mitford Hospital.
The chances of getting these patients treated at any of the 747 private hospitals in the city are slim.
Swapan Kumar Tapadar, deputy director (hospital) of the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS), said hospitals are legally bound to treat every patient.
Director General of the DGHS Prof Deen Mohammad Noorul Huq said the apathy in treating the patients, who attempt suicide, results from the tendency to stay out of legal complexities. Police often handle the cases of suicide.
Huq was enraged by the news that the 500-bed Mugda General Hospital refused to treat Umme Kulsum Ritu who had been rushed there 15 minutes after she took pesticides on September 6.
It took over one and a half hours more to rush Ritu to the DMCH from Mugda hospital, said Jahirul Islam, the headmaster of the school where Ritu studied. She died at the DMCH the same day.
"Depending on the quantity swallowed, treatment in an hour of taking poison is likely to save the victim's life," said Dr Ahmed Faruque Ripon of Care Hospital.
A little over 2 percent of 8,00,000 to a million suicides committed globally a year happens in Bangladesh.
About 89 percent of the persons attempting suicides in 2010 were women, according to a study of Shaheed Suhrawardy Hospital.
Between 2001 and 2010, physical and sexual violence provoked almost 5,000 women to commit suicide, reveals a Jatiya Mahila Ainjibi Samity study.
"All it needs is only a tube and water with which poison is washed from stomach," said assistant Prof Kamrul Hasan, a forensic expert.
Jahirul said he saw Ritu turning blue on his lap by the time she was being taken from Mugda to the DMCH. "When we finally reached, it was too late."
Eminent psychiatrist Dr Mohit Kamal said the sudden shift in culture that turned ever competitive with technological advancements and rapid urbanisation has set people's life on the struggling course to keep up with time.
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