Khodeza Begum reached the doctor Saturday noon at the Dhaka Medical College Hospital (DMCH) to have her daughter examined after standing in a queue for five hours.

Khodeza was lucky as she was able to see the doctor but many others were not so lucky. Khodeza, a domestic help from Dhalpur, seemed disappointed even after she left the doctor's chamber, as the doctor could not examine her daughter, suffering from influenza, for more than a minute. Kamrunnahar, 5, daughter of Khodeza had been suffering from the fever for the last two weeks.

"I gave her Paracetamol for a few days but there was no improvement," Khodeza said.

Many parents like Khodeza have been rushing to DMCH and Dhaka Shishu Hospital and different clinics in the city as viral fever and dengue outbreak hit the children most.

Different sources, including relatives of the patients, doctors, nurses and diagnostic centres, said the number of viral fever, dengue and diarrhoea patients has increased considerably this year. The young ones seem to be the worst affected in this season, they added.

"This rainy season, the number of patients with fever have almost doubled than that of last year," said one of the physicians from the outdoor section of DMCH.

"Within five hours I had to see no less than 150 patients, we cannot even give them a reasonable amount of time to examine," said a medical officers at the DMCH.

"Many patients left the hospital without taking treatment as the queue was too long and they had to stand for hours," he added.

At the DMCH outdoor on Saturday, no less than 1500 patients were treated; of those 60 per cent were viral fever patients. Nearly 500 of them were children, DMCH sources said.

"Generally viral fevers last less than five to seven days but a few people do suffer for 10-12 days," said Prof MA Fayez of DMCH medicine department.

The situation at the Dhaka Shishu Hospital is pretty much the same. The Daily Star found huge crowds of patients and parents at the outdoor section waiting to get help from the doctors.

"Today [Saturday] nearly 700 patients came to the outdoor section of the hospital. But on a day at about the same time last year it was only 450," said a staff of the Shishu Hospital who sells tickets at the counter.

Only 13 doctors were there to examine the 700 patients.

Most of the babies were suffering from viral fever, cough, cold, pneumonia, and typhoid.

Dr Mahbubul Hasan, deputy director of the hospital, said, "We have employed two more doctors at the outdoor section to deal with the flood of patients. We are getting less dengue patients this year."

Meanwhile, drug traders' business is booming just by selling different fever and cold medicines, the traders claimed.

"The sale of these medicines have increased by manifold," said a medicine trader of Medicine Park at Hatirpul Bazar.