One bed per 1.5 lakh cardiac patients

The number of bed for cardiac treatment is only one per 1.5 lakh people in the country, according to a statistic of the Bangladesh Cardiac Society. There are only 1,000 beds for cardiac patients both at private and public facilities in the country where about 75 percent people are at risk of the fatal disease, it showed.
The country has 400 cardiologists and 75 cardiac surgeons for cardiac treatment as more than 11.25 crore people of the country’s total population are at risk of the critical disease.
Secretary General of the Bangladesh Cardiac Society Prof. Khawaja Nasiruddin Mahmood laid emphasis on setting up cardiology departments equipped with both surgery and medicine facilities at all public medical colleges and district level public hospitals to provide adequate treatment to the country’s large number of cardiac patients.
He said a huge pressure of cardiac patients on a handful of the Dhaka based specialised hospitals can be reduced if cardiology departments with medicine and surgical facilities are opened at the country’s periphery. Referring to severe traffic congestion in the capital city, he urged the government for setting up specialised hospitals at all entry points in the capital city to provide emergency treatment to the cardiac patients saying that a cardiac patient usually gets few minutes to receive treatment.
Delay in treatment because of limited facilities for cardiac patients in the public sector, multiplies their ailments resulting in physical and mental disabilities, and even deaths, Prof Khawaja Nasiruddin Mahmood told BSS.
Referring to increasing capacity building of the country’s new generation cardiologists, he put emphasis on inviting specialist physicians from abroad to impart training to the local cardiologists as well as the nurses. Prof Mahmood said that modern and sophisticated training should be imparted to pediatric cardiologists and cardiac surgeons aiming at meeting the growing demand for Bangladeshi physicians both at home and abroad.
He said Bangladesh can export skilled physicians abroad as there is a huge demand of efficient physicians in foreign countries. He said exchange of training programmes between institutions both at home and abroad can play an effective role to produce skilled and efficient physicians.
On the growing demand of physicians in the country, he said Bangladesh needs more physicians as they have to work under tremendous pressure due to lack of adequate number of physicians in the country.
Those who can afford taking their patients aboard do not wait for treatment, but the poor are bound to depend on the government-run hospitals having treatment facilities for child cardiac patients.
Limited cardiac care facilities in public hospitals mostly add to the sufferings of the poor patients those cannot go to private hospitals, some parents were found waiting at the outpatient department of National Institute of Cardiovascular Diseases in Dhaka (NICVD) told BSS.
‘Affluent people are able to take their patients to expensive private clinics and hospitals, even abroad, for cardiac treatment, but the poor have to depend on the low-cost cardiac care providers found only at NICVD,’ one of the parents said.

Courtesy of BSS, Dhaka