With several times more patients than it can hold, the children's department of Rangpur Medical College Hospital (RMCH) is treating three or four children to a bed, and some on the floor. Ajker Patrika's Rangpur correspondent Shipul Islam reports that a modern 100-bed children's hospital, finished about seven years ago, has still not fully opened.
According to the hospital, wards 8, 9 and 10 make up the children's department with 86 beds, but 260-300 children are admitted on an average day. Only 50 nurses are working against a need for 150. Fifty-nine children died in the department in September, none of them from measles. Doctors say putting several children in one bed adds to the strain on care and raises the risk of infection.
Dolly Khatun, nurse in charge of ward 10, said her ward has 40 beds but about 180 patients, and numbers may rise further in winter. Phototherapy units for newborns with jaundice are also too few. Ismail Hossain, who has been at the hospital for 31 days with his newborn from Gaibandha, complained that two babies are being placed under the same phototherapy machine.
The 100-bed children's hospital built to ease the pressure has an emergency department, outpatient unit, labs, operating theatre, specialised units, wards and cabins, but most rooms are unused. Health department sources said a proposal for 659 staff was sent to the ministry in June 2023; for now only outpatients are seen there.
Dr Wazed Ali, deputy director of the divisional health directorate, said three vehicles of furniture recently arrived, but when doctors, other staff and equipment will come depends on the ministry. Dr A N M Tanvir Chowdhury, assistant professor of paediatrics at RMCH, said a large population of the north depends on the hospital, and opening the new children's hospital would ease the pressure considerably.
Source: Ajker Patrika
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