Stories that our photographs tell
The photograph, on the front page of yesterday's The Daily Star, of a five-year-old named Shaon, lying dead on a gurney and his wailing grandfather on the floor of the entrance of Chattogram Medical College Hospital will make the heart of all parents, grandparents and ordinary citizens of the country cry out in pain, anger and frustration. In pain because it is almost impossible to accept such tragedies that happen to kids. In anger because it was easily avoidable. In frustration because nothing will be done to remedy the situation and such tragedies will recur.
The boy was hit by a three-wheeler while playing near his home. Shaon's father and grandfather ran to hospital after hospital, four in all, and were refused treatment. No credible explanation given. Being poor they did not dare ask why. Finally, they came to the above-mentioned hospital. Doctors here attended to him but could not save him. The time lost in going from hospital to hospital cost the boy his life. Those who refused him in reality condemned him to his death -- only a five-year-old.
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The same day's paper has another photograph of a 35-year-old, Amena Begum, a cancer patient, who came from Elenga, Tangail, to the National Institute of Cancer Research (NICR) in Dhaka on June 8 for her cancer treatment. Needing a Corvid-19 test, she had to wait till June 11. To submit her sample she had to go all the way to Mugda Hospital from NICR, several kilometres away. Till the 16th, when our photojournalist met her, she was yet to get her result. And all this while, from the 8th till today, she, with her mother as an attendant, was sleeping in an open space in the hospital as they cannot afford any rented place to sleep. Given the pressure on Mugda Hospital and the fact that many more tests are being done now, her Covid-19 test could take weeks.
Last Tuesday, June 16, we published a set of photos depicting the problems being faced by patients in various hospitals. There was a helpless mother in Chattogram, Morium Akhtar, of a 10-month-old, Rafa, sitting on a road divider and clutching her baby as the hospital she came to refused to admit her infant without a Covid-19 certificate. Hers was a case of inexpressible desperation as she had lost her two previous babies to liver complications and feared to also lose Rafa .
There was a case of a patient from Cox's Bazar suffering from a stroke whose attendants carried him from ward to ward with none to help them find out where exactly they need to go for proper treatment. For stroke patients, as we well know, not every minute but every second counts.
On June 15 we carried the heart-breaking story of a 22-year-old Habiba Sultana, a nurse at the capital's Ibn Sina hospital, who was refused admission and died at the doorstep of the very hospital where she worked. The reason, somehow the Covid-19 negative certificate that she had went missing in her files. Habiba suffered a stroke earlier on June 10 and was admitted to the National Institute of Neurosciences.
When her condition deteriorated the doctors felt that she needed to be in ICU and none was available at the Institute. The doctors advised that the patient be taken somewhere else. Her attendants took her to Ibn Sina, being certain that she will receive treatment there as she was an employee.
The hand-written note on the file that she tested negative for Covid-19 and telephonic assurances by doctors from the Neuroscience Institute failed to convince the authorities at Ibn Sina who refused to take her in, where she later died.
We carried a photograph from Sylhet of an ailing woman, with an oxygen mask to help her breathe, waiting in an ambulance for a token to submit her swab sample for Covid-19 testing, with no idea how long it will take, before which no treatment or even a consultation by a doctor will be possible. Hundreds of patients, regardless of how serious their conditions are, wait for long hours at hospitals for Covid-19 test.
On Sunday, June 13, we carried photographs of two cancer patients, a boy of eight and a girl of 13, both being refused their chemotherapy without Covid-19 clearance. They have spent days just trying to give their samples after which the long process of waiting for the result will begin.
On June 11 there was the story of Abdul Quddus of Kushtia, a heart patient, who arrived at the Rajshahi railway station. As he was being helped by his son and daughter towards the exit of the station he collapsed and fell on the ground. Everybody around them ran away thinking that Quddus was a Covid-19 patient. Nobody helped and no ambulance came to take him to the hospital. Crucial time was lost that proved fatal in the end. To their credit the police came forward, helped them to an autorickshaw, and soon after arriving at the hospital he was pronounced dead. He may have lived if things had happened on time.
We all sadly remember the story of the additional secretary, Goutam Aich Sarkar, who died after being refused treatment at four hospitals. Since then there have been several such deaths numbering probably around 50. This paper itself reported more than 15 such cases.
As of yesterday, we crossed 4,000 new infections from a testing sample of 17,000, which experts feel to be far from adequate to get a realistic picture. Also, these samples are from people who either come forward to be tested or seek it over telephone because of symptoms. So, the testing sample is not representative in any statistical sense which can be used to either assess how infected our population is or predict in any scientific way what the future scenario is likely to be. We seem to have learnt nothing from other countries, especially South Korea, Vietnam, Taiwan or Thailand, most of whom are readying themselves to reopen their countries.
The question is given our inadequate and highly stressed health system, as depicted in the sample stories above, and in which our doctors and nurses are already suffering from unacceptable and tragic level of casualties and overall weak health infrastructure, how are we going to handle the rising cases of coronavirus infection which appear to be upon us? Rhetorical exhortation, if not even remotely matched by reality, runs the risk of widening the credibility gap, which is the worst thing that should happen during this pandemic.
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