A health complex needs care

A stray dog roaming about in the patients' ward on the ground floor of Dakope Upazila Health Complex recently.Photo: STAR

Dakope Upazila Health Complex has become repulsive to treatment seekers as the 50-bed hospital is beset with manifold problems including serious manpower crisis and shortage of medicines.
Amid security problem, patients often pass sleepless nights as they are scared of stray dogs moving around.
"Stray dogs often invade the compound," said a female patient who requested anonymity.
"We are really afraid as furious dogs sometimes enter the hospital ward even," said another patient.
Many patients, especially those who have to stay on the floor due to shortage of beds, are often compelled to buy food and medicines from outside, they said.
Stray dogs moving at large inside the hospital sometimes snatch patients' diet, eyewitnesses said.
Admitting unhygienic condition, shortage of beds, crisis of medicines, lack of medical services and absence of requisite physicians at Dakope Upazila Health Complex, upazila Chairman Sheikh Abul Hossain said the hospital cannot provide life saving drugs for patients suffering from critical diseases.
"Proper medical services for patients cannot be given as there is shortage of manpower including physicians and nurses. There is crisis of medicines too. Besides, patients always outnumber the beds," said Dr Akbar Hossain, medical officer of the health complex.
Fifteen posts of physicians and nurses have been lying vacant for the last three years. The operation theatre has also remained inactive for two years.
This hospital, upgraded to a 50-bed one in 2005, is now in urgent need of consultant physicians for all departments including medicine, surgery, pathology, cardiology, ENT, ophthalmology and dentistry, the medical officer said.
The hospital has no paediatrician although the number of child patients is on rise, he said.
Asked about the entrance of stray dogs into hospital wards, he said it occurred due to absence of security guards, especially at night.