Dhaka Medical College Hospital is the only public hospital in the whole of Bangladesh to treat serious burn injuries while hospitals and clinics outside the capital have no burn units.
Hundreds of burn injury patients are admitted to hospitals across the country every month, but all the serious cases, constituting 5 per cent of the total, have to be referred to Dhaka Medical College Hospital as they have no facilities to treat them.
Some patients cannot be moved to Dhaka as their condition is so serious, doctors said.
The lack of facilities outside Dhaka has put the 50-bed DMCH burn unit under huge pressure. At any one time it is providing treatment to an average of 250 patients which is five times its capacity. Most of the patients receive treatment lying on the hospital’s floor.
Although there is a 13-bed burn unit in Chittagong Medical College Hospital, Dr Ayub Ali, an assistant professor, said, ‘We refer serious cases to Dhaka Medical College Hospital as we have no ICU.’
Nazrul Islam, specialist of the surgery unit at Sher-E-Bangla Medical College Hospital in Barishal city, also told New Age that around 5,000 burn injury patients are admitted to the surgery unit a year, many of whom have to be referred to Dhaka.
He acknowledged that they often cannot provide satisfactory treatment to the patients that stay with them.
The Khulna Medical College Hospital superintendent Dr QH Asgar also confirmed that the hospital had to send many of the 100 to 150 burn injury patients that come to it every year to Dhaka. He said that the hospital had been trying to open a unit for burn injury patients.
DMCH burn unit director Dr Samanta Lal Sen told New Age that a total of 60 to 70 burn injury patients come to ‘out-patients’ unit at the hospital, 10 to 12 of whom are admitted to the burn unit everyday.
Most of the patients come from outside Dhaka, he said, adding that around 300 patients are currently admitted to the unit.
As the majority of patients live outside Dhaka – it can become very expensive for the patients’ families who come to the city to support their injured relative.
Dr Samanta said that the government was planning to open a burn unit in different medical college hospital and he hoped this would happen within the next six months.
