Courtesy New Age 14/9/10
Treatment of the patients at different city hospitals was seriously hampered as most of the physicians and nurses were on leave for the Eid festival.
Patients from Savar, Narayanganj, Gazipur and different private hospitals in the city were referred to Dhaka Medical College Hospital due to shortage of doctors.
The emergency and casualty department of DMCH received huge patients during the Eid holidays, but their treatment was hampered due to shortage of duty doctors, patients and hospital sources said.
Some fourth class employees of the hospital claimed they did the small-scale duties of nurses such as pushing and changing saline to help the patients during the vacation.
Rabeya, an expecting mother, came to DMCH emergency on Eid night after being referred by Ad-Din Hospital in the city.
'There were only two doctors and three nurses on duty at DMCH emergency unit when I came to the hospital,' Rabeya said adding that she was shifted to the ward on Monday morning from the emergency.
The deliveries of some woman were done on the trolley in the emergency instead of labour room, patients complained. DMCH director Brigadier Shahidul Haque Mallik said, 'We received a huge number of patients from the whole country as most of the hospitals did not receive them. we have enough doctors on duty but the pressure of the patients was much too high than regular time.'
Patients of Shahid Suhrawardi Hospital in the city also alleged that very few doctors were on duty during the vacation.
'Only one doctor came in a round instead of three times a day on Eid day and the day after,' said Sadequl, a patient at the hospital.
Many patients in a stable condition were discharged from the hospitals before the festival due to possible shortage of doctors, physicians of National Institute of Cardio-Vascular Diseases said.
Kajal Kumar Karmakar, resident physician of NICVD said that some patients who wanted to go home during Eid vacation were also discharged.
'Most of the doctors and nurses working at the indoor over the last few days are non-Muslim as the Muslims are on vacation,' he said.
The outdoor of the hospital was closed on the Eid day, he said adding that no scheduled operation was conducted during the vacation. A total of 14 doctors were on duty at the outdoor unit and 11 were in the indoor unit during the vacation days, Kajal said.
NICVD officials said they usually received 400 to 450 patients at the outdoor and around 200 patients were admitted on an average. But the number of patients sharply decreased at the outdoor during the festival, they said.
In last three days, only 60 patients were admitted at the hospital on an average, the officials said.
The patients who required angiogram were discharged before the Eid because of shortage of doctors, they said, adding that the pathological tests and X-ray of the outdoor patients were not conducted during the vacation. Only admitted patients got the facilities of having the tests, they said.
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