Rajkumar Das stood with his son, Saikat Kumar Das, at Shaheed Suhrawardy Medical College Hospital for over an hour, desperately seeking a bed in the male dengue ward.
So far, the country has already recorded 44 deaths and 3,651 hospitalisations from dengue this year. With ongoing intermittent rains, experts fear the situation could worsen if immediate actions are not taken.
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The number of dengue patients will be higher this year than last year and most of the cases will be from outside Dhaka, said experts.
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The demand for anti-mosquito products, such as coils, aerosol sprays, nets and rackets, has increased in Bangladesh as people are looking to avoid dengue fever amid the recent outbreak, according to businesspeople.
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The country has already seen the death of 12 dengue patients before the beginning of the monsoon, while 1,261 others were hospitalised till yesterday. The numbers indicate alarming signs of a massive dengue outbreak this year.
Sobita, a nurse at the Dhaka Medical College Hospital is now handling more than 10 times the patients she used to at her previous job at the National Institute of Diseases of the Chest and Hospital.
The number of dengue patients this month surpassed the combined total of such patients in the last 19 years with experts warning about further spread of the virus in the next two months.
Three more, including two children, died from dengue fever in Dhaka, Rangpur and Faridpur yesterday. With them, 123 people have died this year after being infected with the mosquito-borne disease.
Five hours and 15 minutes. That is how long it took Mohammad Alauddin, a mason from Mirpur’s Kazipara, to get a bed at the Shaheed Suhrawardy Medical College Hospital in the capital. Even then, it took the intervention of the hospital’s director to get him admitted.
Doctors and hospital staffers are at a higher risk of being infected with dengue while treating patients and also due to Aedes mosquito breeding grounds in and around hospitals, healthcare professionals said.
Villagers of Pankhyapara take some measures to prevent dengue, a mosquito-borne disease, in Khagrachhari Sadar as it has taken an alarming turn across the country.
Experts are worried that dengue outbreak would remain a serious threat at least until October and they are not ruling out November.
Bangladesh can take a page out of Kolkata’s playbook in tackling the spread of dengue, which has already infected a record 17,183 people in the country.
When the country is grappling with a record number of dengue cases, different hospitals, clinics and diagnostic centres face a short supply of a kit that is needed to detect the fever at the early stage.
With the capital gripped by panic over dengue, experts said global warm-ing resulting from climate change is a key reason behind the rising num-ber of dengue cases.