A hospital sans essential services

It is unfortunate that an important hospital like the Dhaka Mahanagar General Hospital, one of the two hospitals run by the Dhaka South City Corporation (DSCC), is struggling to provide essential services to the large number of patients who visit it every day. Based in Old Dhaka, the public hospital is a major destination for local healthcare seekers, and as such, is expected to be sufficiently staffed and equipped to handle the patient load with all sections functioning properly. But in reality, it has one-third of the beds missing and suffers from an acute shortage of doctors, nurses and general staff. The shortage of beds is due to its surgery department remaining closed for the past six years. Given how important a surgery department is in any hospital, one cannot help but wonder why a replacement could not be found in all these years.

According to our report, the 150-bed hospital is supposed to have 50 beds for medicine, 50 for gynaecology and 50 for surgery. After the closure of the surgery department in 2015, following the departure of its designated doctor, it is essentially a 100-bed facility now. Its ailment does not end here, however. It was declared a Covid-dedicated facility during the peak of the pandemic, and the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS) had given some ICU beds in 2020 to meet the growing demand. But the facility could not utilise those beds because of a shortage of physicians and other required healthcare workers. At the moment, almost half of the doctors' posts in the hospital are vacant. This explains why patients seeking medical attention have to wait long hours before they can find a doctor.

It is quite surprising that, although the hospital authorities have reportedly sent several requisition letters to the higher authorities for necessary manpower for the ICUs and HDUs, they received no concrete reply till date. The hospital authorities admitted that because of the doctor and staff crisis, they were not able to deliver the services expected of them. It goes without saying that the urgency of having all the departments functioning with the required number of doctors and healthcare workers has become more prominent as the country goes through the third wave of the pandemic.

The sordid pictures coming from a major hospital like the Dhaka Mahanagar General Hospital, run with taxpayers' money, is not only unfortunate; it is totally unacceptable as well. We hope the relevant authorities will take all necessary measures to sufficiently equip the hospital and improve its services without further delay, so that patients can get necessary treatment in time.