Traffic jams turn fatal

Staff Correspondent
..........................................................

It was Saturday noon on the 16th of July when Belal Hossain, joint news editor of private television channel Shomoy TV was severely injured in a road accident at city's Agargaon area.

His relatives first took him to Suhrawardi Hospital where authorities failed to provide him with any emergency medical service. They then tried to take him to Dhaka Medical College Hospital (DMCH) but the traffic jam at different points of the city was so bad that by the time they reached DMCH, Belal was beyond the need for emergency service.

He passed away during the long wait to reach the hospital.

“Can you believe that it took us one and a half hours to reach DMCH from Suhrawardi in city's College Gate area? Belal was bleeding, he was groaning in pain and that's how he left this world. We could not do anything except pray to Allah,” his brother in law Shohag told the newspaper yesterday.

“I believe we could have had a chance to save his life if only we could take him to the hospital on time,” he said.

Shohag and his family are not the only brutal victims of the traffic jam that is worsening day by day in the capital and its outskirts. There are many more who have faced the same horror.

On 11th July family members of injured Delwar Hossain, 55, were bringing him from Sonargaon to at the DMCH. The journey took them three hours.

“We brought his dead body to the hospital at 11:30 pm. The ambulance was stuck at Jatrabari for long two hours in the traffic,” his widow Amela Begum said. He took his last breath as the ambulance stood stranded in the traffic near Gulistan.

Some 30 ambulance drivers in front of the Dhaka Medical College, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University and Shaheed Suhrawardi Hospital told this correspondent recently of the tragic deaths patients met in the ambulances on their way to hospitals.

“It used to take only half an hour from the Pongu Hospital to DMCH. But now we find it impossible to make the journey in even two hours. The situation is worser if patients are being brought from outside the city. They face the horror of the terrible traffic jams at the two vital entry points to the city at Jatrabari and Gazipur,” Kawsar Hossain, a driver, said.

He recalled how a woman in labour gave birth in the ambulance when it took over two hours to get to a hospital.

“We are completely helpless while transporting a critical patient if we get stuck in traffic. All we can do is blast our siren on,” said one Lavlu who has been driving ambulances for 14 years.

He recalled a patient, who had suffered a stroke, whom he was bringing from Enam Medical College hospital in Savar to DMCH in the city some time ago.

“I can't explain to you the desperation we all felt as his relatives wailed for help but we were trapped in traffic gridlock for long two hours at Gabtoli and then another half an hour at Mirpur Technical corner. At the end, I had to reverse my ambulance and head back to the village home of the poor patient to bury him.”

'In developed countries at least other vehicles on the road make way for an ambulance when they hear its siren. Here we don't see the same thing happening. Nobody cares,' he added.

Sometimes traffic police try to make a way for an ambulance. But in severe jams there is not even an inch for anyone to move, so that can the traffic police do, some of the other ambulance drivers pointed out.

Medical officers on duty at the emergency ward of DMCH said that see many patients brought in dead to the hospital when relatives were unable to make I to the hospital on time. Most of these patients are brought in from outside Dhaka.

Dr Shahinur, an honorary doctor at the emergency ward, said on July 15th alone seven patients were brought dead to the hospital.

An usual Dhaka street scene with cars stuck bumper to bumper. Photo: Star