Editorial
City hospitals
Emergency services are very inadequate
The need for building up the capacity to deal with an unforeseen medical crisis cannot be overemphasized in an overpopulated metropolis like Dhaka. The hospitals have to be well equipped to cope with a sudden rush of victims of accidents or natural calamities. In such cases, the number of people in desperate need of medical attention could be very high. The doctors and nurses at the DMCH, the biggest public sector hospital in the country, found themselves in a difficult situation when hundreds of injured were rushed to the hospital following the August 21 blasts. Apparently, nobody was prepared for such a tragic incident, but it laid bare the inadequacies of the emergency services available in the city hospitals. Delving deep into the matter, we will surely discover some built-in flaws in the existing capacity of the hospitals to handle an emergency. To begin with, most of the private hospitals do not have an emergency unit worth the name. Then, the majority of these hospitals are very reluctant to admit badly injured people and often refer them to government hospitals, though it goes against medical ethics. This problem can be solved if the health authorities make it mandatory for any private clinic to have emergency facilities in order to receive a license. The hospitals fail to deliver the needed services even under normal circumstances. So, it is not hard to guess how difficult the situation becomes when there is a sudden rush of critically wounded patients. It is said that resource constraints make it impossible to equip the hospitals properly. However, lack of planning is also a major lapse. The hospitals have never thought of raising emergency squads that can be mobilised during a big crisis. Improvement in this area needs focussed thinking by the health authorities. They have to realise, before anything else, that in a city of nearly 10 million people, it is not enough to have an ill-equipped, small emergency unit at the premier hospital (DMCH), with barely two doctors on duty at a time.
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