DNCC Covid-19 Hospital: Struggling to meet the rising demand

The newly-launched DNCC Covid-19 hospital in Dhaka has been struggling with the rising number of patients due to shortage of skilled manpower and other facilities.

The hospital, set up at Dhaka North City Corporation's Mohakhali market, is yet to launch pathology test and diagnosis services for patients.

The authorities, however, said they were expecting to resolve all the issues by the end of this month.

To tackle the second wave of coronavirus that started from the second week of March, the government partially launched operation of the 1,000-bed DNCC hospital from April 18.

As of yesterday, the hospital authorities have launched a total of 100 beds in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) and 30 beds in the High Dependency Unit (HDU) on the fifth floor of the hospital.

Besides, there are 50 beds with high-flow oxygen support (High-Flow Nasal Cannula) in operation in the emergency unit at the first floor of the hospital.

Of them, only eight ICU beds were vacant yesterday afternoon, according to the staffers at the Triage and Emergency Department at the hospital.

On Thursday, the number of available ICU beds was just one.

Knowing that only one ICU bed remained vacant, Fatema Begum at the reception area of the hospital was at a loss. She was planning to shift her 70-year-old Covid-infected father here from the ICU of Birdem hospital.

"We had to pay Birdem hospital more than Tk 1.5 lakh for ICU service in the last 24 hours. It's too expensive for us," Fatema, who lives in Dhaka's Mirpur, told The Daily Star on Thursday.

Malasirema, a nurse at the emergency department of the hospital, said, "We have been facing a huge rush of patients every day."

MANPOWER SHORTAGRE

Initially, the hospital started operation with 50 ICU beds, 50 emergency beds, and 150 general beds with 130 doctors, 200 nurses, around 300 staffers and 100 army personnel to supervise the operation.

As the number of ICU beds in operation has increased, the hospital authorities are struggling to serve patients with quality service with the same workforce.

A doctor who came to visit her Covid-19 infected relative at the hospital's ICU said, "All the necessary equipment is there. But the service is not good yet."

During a visit on Thursday afternoon, this correspondent saw attendants were shifting a patient from the ICU unit to a private hospital.

"The service is very poor. We are shifting our patient to the nearby Impulse Hospital. We have to pay Tk 60,000 per day there, but we have no other way," alleged Enamul Haque, an attendant.

Brig Gen AKM Nasir Uddin, director of the hospital, said, "We have increased our ICU bed capacity to 100 from 50. Almost all the beds are full. However, we have a shortage of human resources."

"New doctors and nurses are joining gradually. We will be able to resolve the issues by the end of this month," he told The Daily Star on Thursday.

Contacted yesterday, the director said, "By tomorrow (today), we will get 54 consultants, 25 ICU nurses and five doctors from the armed forces. Besides, another 100 nurses are joinng us soon."

NO DIAGNOSIS SERVICES

Meanwhile, the hospital is yet to launch pathology test and diagnosis services for patients.

Nurjahan Begum [not her real name] said she had to spend Tk 10,000 for pathological tests of her husband in 24 hours since Wednesday.

"As there is no diagnosis facility here, we had to take my husband out of the hospital in an ambulance to a nearby diagnostic centre," she told this correspondent.

About the absence pathology service, the hospital director said, "The pathology labs are under construction. We have received most of the necessary equipment already and the labs will start operating soon."

"Besides to mitigate the crisis, we have started operating the pathology lab in a limited scale and for the time being, we are using two portable X-ray machines," he added.

At full capacity, this dedicated Covid-19 hospital can have 212 ICU and 250 HDU beds, and 540 isolated high care rooms for Covid-19 patients, according to hospital sources.