Two child patients per bed!
A stream of child patients with typhoid and cold-related diseases, including pneumonia, has been causing serious overcrowding at the paediatric ward of the Patuakhali General Hospital for the last one month. And the authorities, in order to provide treatment to the maximum number of patients at the 48-bed ward, have been allocating each bed for two patients, along with their attendants. This, of course, means that the Covid-19 safety guidelines are impossible to follow at the ward, putting the parents of these children, as well as the hospital staff, at great risk of contracting the disease. Moreover, given that the virus is constantly mutating and is not yet fully understood by us, what guarantee is there that the children will not be affected at all by it in some way?
Over the past month, 681 patients had to be treated at the ward, which clearly does not have the capacity to deal with such an influx. While we appreciate the hospital's attempt to provide treatment to all the patients coming in, cramming so many people in together at a time like this has its own dangers.
Since the overcrowding has been going on for a month, the authorities should have taken some steps to increase the hospital's capacity to provide paediatric treatment, once it realised that the influx was not a one-time event. Why wasn't such action taken? Was it due to a lack of resources? Or was it due to a lack of initiative taken by the hospital authorities? Either way, a situation like this cannot be allowed to continue. At a time when the authorities should be doing everything to control the spread of the Covid-19 virus, cramming so many children and their parents into one ward cannot be the final solution.
The authorities must immediately do what is necessary to increase the hospital's capacity to treat the child patients. Moreover, the hospital should strictly follow the relevant Covid-19 safety guidelines to ensure that it does not turn into a Covid-19 hotspot, which would be completely counterproductive.
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