Patients at Khulna Medical College and Hospital (KMCH) have been struggling to receive proper treatment due to overcrowding and manpower shortage. The authorities of KMCH have been scrambling to provide treatment due to bed shortage as the number of patients is three times higher than the capacity of the 500-bed hospital. Besides, physicians at the outdoor department of the hospital are also having a difficult time with 1500 patients on average every day seeking medical treatment. 3 KMCH doctors missing since Friday Deputy director of KMCH, Dr Niaz Mustafi Chwodhury, said a record number of patients are thronging at the hospital as the authorities have expanded healthcare services after opening new departments. “Though we are struggling a lot to provide medical services to the record number of patients, we are trying our best,” he said. Clash with medicine traders: KMCH students boycott classes During a recent visit to the hospital, this UNB correspondent found that the floors, veranda, and staircases near the entrance of the hospital building are overcrowded with patients. Many were receiving treatment, resting on mats on the floor, close to the bathroom and staircases due to shortage of beds. Jahangir Alam, who came to the hospital with his father from Rupsha upazila, said, “I brought my father with respiratory problems. He has been receiving treatment on the floor of the veranda for the past seven days. My father is suffering a lot due to the heat as there is no fan in the veranda.” The staff of the hospital are also responding slowly as they are unable to cope with the overwhelming number of patients. According to hospital sources, 81 posts under 31 wards of 16 departments at KMCH have remained vacant for a long period — forcing staff to deal with patients with inadequate manpower. KMCH intern doctors call for work abstention over clash between students and medicine traders

BNP Secretary General Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir was discharged from a city hospital on Monday around nine hours after being admitted there. Fakhrul returned to his Uttara residence as doctors at United Hospital discharged him at around 9:30pm after assessing his medical reports and health condition, BNP Media Cell member Sayrul Kabir Khan told UNB. He said the physicians advised the BNP secretary general to rest at home. Earlier in the day, the BNP secretary general was admitted to the hospital at about 12:30pm as he fell sick at the party chairperson's Gulshan office. Fakhrul was taken to the high dependency unit of the cardiology department of the hospital under Professor Muminuzzaman. Later, he underwent some medical tests and no major complication was detected. Fakhrul has been suffering from various health complications, including diabetes, hypertension and cardiac problems that worsened during his recent imprisonment. He returned home on Thursday from Singapore after receiving medical treatment there for a week. On February 10, Fakhrul and his wife went there for a follow-up checkup and treatment. The 76-year-old received treatment at Singapore National University Hospital. On December 9, a team of the Detective Branch (DB) of police picked up Fakhrul and party standing committee member Mirza Abbas from their homes in separate raids in the capital, a day before the party's much-talked about rally in the capital. He walked out of Dhaka Central Jail in Keraniganj on January 9 and received treatment at Evercare Hospital for two days before going to Singapore. In 2015, while incarcerated, Fakhrul was diagnosed with a block in the internal carotid artery of his neck. After his release, he went to Singapore for treatment. Since then, he needs to go to Singapore every year for follow-up treatment.    

Patients, most of them elderly, are lying on stretchers in hallways and taking oxygen while sitting in wheelchairs as COVID-19 surges in China’s capital Beijing. The Chuiyangliu hospital in the city’s east was packed with newly arrived patients on Thursday. By midmorning beds had run out, even as ambulances continued to bring those in need. Hard-pressed nurses and doctors rushed to take information and triage the most urgent cases. The surge in severely ill people needing hospital care follows China abandonment of its most severe pandemic restrictions last month after nearly three years of lockdowns, travels bans and school closures that weighed heavily on the economy and prompted street protests not seen since the late 1980s. It also comes as the the European Union on Wednesday “strongly encouraged” its member states to impose pre-departure COVID-19 testing of passengers from China. Over the past week, EU nations have reacted with a variety of restrictions toward travelers from China, disregarding an earlier commitment to act in unity. Italy — where the pandemic first exacted a heavy toll in Europe in early 2020 — was the first EU member to require coronavirus tests for airline passengers coming from China, but France and Spain quickly followed with their own measures. That followed the imposition by the U.S. of a requirement that all passengers from China show a negative test result obtained in the previous 48 hours before departure. China has warned of “countermeasures” if such policies were to be imposed across the bloc. Still, World Health Organization head Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Wednesday he was concerned about the lack of outbreak data from the Chinese government. China has sought to get more of its elderly population vaccinated, but those efforts have been hampered by past scandals involving fake medications and previous warnings about adverse reactions to the vaccines among older people. China’s domestically developed vaccines are also considered less effective than the mRNA jabs used elsewhere.

Brazilian football great Pelé was hospitalized in Sao Paulo to regulate the medication in his fight against a colon tumour, his daughter said on Wednesday. Kely Nascimento added that there was “no emergency” concerning her 82-year-old father’s health. Nascimento, who lives in the United States, made the comments in an Instagram post after what she called “lots of alarm in the media today concerning my dad’s health.” ESPN Brasil reported earlier that the three-time World Cup champion was taken to Hospital Albert Einstein due to “general swelling.” “Really and truly, we appreciate the concern and love,” Nascimento said. Spokespeople for Pelé and Hospital Albert Einstein did not reply to a request for comment from The Associated Press. Pelé removed a tumour in September of 2021, with the hospital saying then that he would begin chemotherapy. Edson Arantes do Nascimento, globally known as Pelé, has used his social media channels since then to deny he was in poor health. His latest public comment was in an Instagram post on Oct. 23, his birthday.  “I just want to express my gratitude. Life is good. Turning 82 with my family, in good health, is the best gift. Thank you for everything I have received,” he said in a video. Pelé helped Brazil win the 1958, 1962 and 1970 World Cups and remains the country’s all-time leading scorer with 77 goals in 92 matches for the national team.      

An overnight rocket attack destroyed a hospital maternity ward in southern Ukraine, killing a 2-day-old baby, Ukrainian authorities said Wednesday. Ukraine's first lady said the attack caused “horrible pain,” vowing that “we will never forget and never forgive." The baby’s mother and a doctor were pulled alive from the rubble in Vilniansk, close to the city of Zaporizhzhia. The region's governor said the rockets were Russian. The strike adds to the gruesome toll suffered by hospitals and other medical facilities — and their patients and staff — in the Russian invasion that will enter its tenth month this week. They have been in the firing line from the outset, including a March 9 airstrike that destroyed a maternity hospital in the now-occupied port city of Mariupol. “At night, Russian monsters launched huge rockets at the small maternity ward of the hospital in Vilniansk. Grief overwhelms our hearts — a baby was killed who had just seen the light of day. Rescuers are working at the site,” said the regional governor, Oleksandr Starukh, writing on the Telegram messaging app. First lady Olena Zelenska wrote on Twitter that a 2-day-old boy died in the strike and expressed her condolences. “Horrible pain. We will never forget and never forgive,” she said. Photos posted by the governor showed thick smoke rising above mounds of rubble, being combed by emergency workers against the backdrop of a dark night sky. Read more: Deadly missile strike adds to Ukraine war fears in Poland The State Emergency Service initially said a baby was killed and that a new mother and a doctor were pulled from the rubble, and that they were the only people in the ward at the time. The service specified in a follow-up post on Telegram that the rescued woman was the newborn’s mother. The emergency service said the two-story building was destroyed. Vilniansk is in the Ukrainian-held north of the Zaporizhzhia region, and is about 500 kilometers (300 miles) southeast of Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv. Other parts of Zaporizhzhia are Russian-held and it is one of four Ukrainian regions that Russia illegally annexed in September after internationally condemned sham referendums. Medical workers' efforts have been complicated by unrelenting Russian attacks in recent weeks on Ukraine's infrastructure that officials say have caused huge damage to the power grid. The situation is even worse in the southern city of Kherson, from which Russia retreated nearly two weeks ago after months of occupation — cutting power and water lines. Many doctors in the city are working in the dark, unable to use elevators to transport patients to surgery and operating with headlamps, cell phones and flashlights. In some hospitals, key equipment no longer works. “Breathing machines don’t work, X-ray machines don’t work ... There is only one portable ultrasound machine and we carry it constantly,” said Volodymyr Malishchuk, the head of surgery at a children’s hospital in the city. On Tuesday, after strikes on Kherson seriously wounded 13-year-old Artur Voblikov, a team of health staff carefully maneuvered the sedated boy up six flights of a narrow staircase to an operating room to amputate his left arm. Malischchuk said that three children wounded by Russian strikes have come to the hospital this week, half as many as had previously been admitted in all of the nine months since the invasion began. Picking up a piece of shrapnel that was found in a 14-year-old boy’s stomach, he said children are arriving with severe head injuries and ruptured internal organs. Artur's mother, Natalia Voblikova, sat in the dark hospital with her daughter, waiting for his surgery to end. “You can’t even call (Russians) animals, because animals take care of their own,” said Voblikova wiping tears from her eyes. “But the children ... Why kill children?” In the northeastern city of Kupiansk, two civilians were killed and two more were wounded by Russian shelling on Wednesday morning, a regional official said. A nine-story residential building and a clinic were damaged, and a 55-year-old woman and a 68-year-old man died, Kharkiv governor Oleh Syniehubov said on Telegram. Read more: Russian missiles cross into Poland during strike on Ukraine, killing 2 Kupiansk was an early prize of Ukraine’s lightning offensive in the northeastern Kharkiv region in September and, like other recaptured settlements, has seen repeated shelling by Russian forces which many Ukrainian officials describe as retaliation. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that “the terrorist state continues to fight against civilians and civilian objects.” ”The enemy has once again decided to try to achieve with terror and murder what he wasn’t able to achieve for nine months and won’t be able to achieve,” he said on Telegram.

Doctors and nurses at Barishal’s Sher-e-bangla Medical College Hospital (SBMCH) are finding it hard to provide treatment to patients as electricity supply remained snapped in five units of the hospital for the last couple of days.  Surgery ward no 3 and 4 of G-block(male), surgery ward no 1 of A Block(male) and I block(Eye) have been without electricity for the last three days, while the radiology department has been facing power cuts for the last 18 days. Naimul Islam, relative of a patient, said that they can’t even go to the washroom at night due to lack of electricity.  “We don’t get proper treatment at the hospital. Still, we’ve to come here as we don’t have any other place to go. The hospital doesn’t even have electricity. I don’t know how the hospital is running without monitoring,” said Arafat Hossain Shaon, relative of another patient. Read: Nasrul Hamid under fire in Parliament for electricity crisis Wishing to be anonymous, a nurse of the hospital said that they can’t provide injections to the patients properly due to darkness at night. “We’re currently doing our work with the help of candles and charger lights. The hospital authority is building a gate spending crores of taka, which is unnecessary. The money should’ve been spent on fixing the electrical cables and ensuring constant supply of electricity through generators,” said the nurse. The nurse added that instead of building a gate, emphasis should be given on how to provide treatment to the patients more effectively. Dr HM Saiful Islam, director of the hospital, didn’t respond to the calls made by UNB to collect information about the electricity crisis. Read: No govt decision to stop supply of daytime electricity: Hasan Mahmud “The surgery wards and the radiology department don’t have electricity at this moment. Although founded in 1968, electricity lines of the hospital were never repaired. I think dilapidated electrical cables are the reason why power outage is happening at the hospital,” said Dr Moniruzzaman Shahin, assistant director (Administration) of SBMCH.

A former Bangladesh Chhatra League (BCL) leader, who was allegedly beaten up by Naldanga Upazila Parishad Chairman Asaduzzaman over a Facebook post on Monday, died while undergoing treatment at a hospital on Tuesday. The deceased is identified as Jamiul Alim Jibon, a former member of the upazila unit BCL and son of Farhad Hossain of Aamtali Bazar area. Sources said Chairman Asaduzzaman beat up the former BCL leader and his father after calling them to the bazar over the Facebook status on Monday evening, leaving them critically injured. They were first rushed to Natore Sadar Hospital and later shifted to Rajshahi Medical College Hospital (RMCH) due to deterioration of their physical conditions. Jibon succumbed to his injuries while undergoing treatment at the Intensive Care Unit of the RMCH on Tuesday evening. Read: BCL factional clash leaves eight injured at Chattogram College Meanwhile, the victim’s mother Jahanara Begum lodged a complaint at the police station in this connection. Shafiqul Islam, Officer-in-charge of Naldanga Police Station, said they heard the news of death of Jibon. The chairman is yet to be detained in this connection.     Chairman Asaduzzaman, also member of the upazila unit Awami League, could not be reached over mobile phone as it was found switched off.    

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on Wednesday asked the physicians to dedicate themselves to extensively serve the general people and behave well with patients. “I would like to request the doctors to dedicate themselves more extensively in providing healthcare services to the general and poor people of the country. You’ll have to go to villages and take care of the rural people. You’ll have to behave well with them,” she said. The premier said this while inaugurating the newly constructed Super Specialized Hospital in Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University (BSMMU) through a virtual platform from her official residence Ganobhaban. Read Specialized Hospital starts journey in Ukhiya The country’s first super specialized hospital will be an alternative option for many Bangladeshis opting to go abroad for treatment.

A new hospital has started its journey in Ukhiya of Cox's Bazar  to strengthen specialized health services, improving the lives and wellbeing of people living in the area.  State Minister of Disaster Management and Relief Enamur Rahman inaugurated  the Specialized Hospital on Tuesday.  The hospital, which was constructed and equipped by UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, will provide specialist treatment for lifesaving interventions and secondary care for patients living in the Ukhiya area, including Rohingya refugees. Read: UNHCR Goodwill envoy Tahsan meets Rohingyas in Cox’s Bazar “This hospital is a milestone for Ukhiya. The facility offers medical treatment long sought for but until now not available in the area. The hospital has been set up by UNHCR and its partners, thanks to generous funding by the Government of Japan. We trust that the Ukhiya community will help take care of the facilities to ensure its future”, said Dr. Md. Enamur Rahman. With timely specialist consultations, the Ukhiya Specialized Hospital will reduce the need for patients to travel to Cox’s Bazar or Chattogram for treatment and make services more accessible for people with limited financial resources. It will provide outpatient surgery, dental care, eye care, orthopaedic and trauma care, physical rehabilitation, and palliative care.  These services will be supported by a laboratory, medical imaging, such as X-ray, ultrasound and echography, as well as new telemedicine services through virtual consultations by specialists.  The services are currently delivered by UNHCR partners Gonoshasthaya Kendra, Orbis International and Relief International, in close collaboration with the Ministry of Health.  An MoU signed between UNHCR, MoDMR and MoH on 30 June states that, in three years, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare will progressively take over responsibility for the management and resourcing of the facility. ”I pay tribute to the medical and administrative staff which has started working in the hospital. Serving both the local community and the Rohingya refugee population contributes to mutual understanding of each other’s needs, living conditions and well-being,” said Johannes Van Der Klaauw, UNHCR Representative. Read: UNHCR, Liberation War Museum launches ‘We are Rohingya’ photo exhibition The State Minister and UNHCR Representative were accompanied by  Md Kamrul Hasan , sectetay,  Prof. Dr. Meerjady Sabrina Flora, Additional Director General of Health Services, Shah Rezwan Hayat, Refugee Relief and Repatriation Commissioner (RRRC), Taskforce Commander Brigadier Azahar, Hiroyuki Yamaya, Minister for the Embassy of Japan, and Ita Schuette Head of UNHCR Cox’s Bazar. “This new hospital will facilitate access to specialised care, same-day surgeries and other services scarcely available in Cox’s Bazar. I sincerely hope that this project will contribute to better health and living conditions for Rohingya refugees and host communities in Cox’s Bazar”, said Mr. Hiroyuki Yamaya, Minister of the Embassy of Japan in Bangladesh.  The Government of Japan contributed USD 1.7 million for the construction of in-patient facilities, installation of medical equipment, and procurement of medical items for the hospital. For additional information please contact: Regina De La Portilla, Communications Officer, [email protected]; +880 1 847 327 279

BNP Chairperson Khaleda Zia, who is undergoing treatment at Evercare Hospital in the city, was shifted to a cabin from the Coronary Care Unit (CCU) on Wednesday. “Madam (Khaleda) was taken to a cabin from the CCU in the afternoon,” Khaleda’s personal physician Prof AZM Zahid Hossain told UNB. He said Prof Shahabuddin Talukder, head of the medical board formed at the hospital for her treatment, along with a team of cardiologists visited the BNP chief at the CCU.“They then decided that the next follow-up treatment would be given keeping her (Khaleda) at the cabin.” Zahid said all the facilities of the CCU of the hospital have been installed in the cabin where the BNP chief was shifted. He said doctors will keep her under their close observation at the cabin and ensure her proper treatment. “The medical board will take decision on the next course of her treatment based on her condition”. Earlier on Monday, Zahid said the medical board decided to keep Khaleda Zia under close observation for some more days. He also said three blockages were found in the arteries of the BNP chairperson through a coronary angiogram test conducted on Saturday. Zahid, also a BNP vice chairman, said Khaleda suffered a heart attack due to 95 percent blockage in her left artery. “A stent has been placed there by removing the blockage.” Read: Khaleda Zia shifted to CCU About two other blockages, Zahid said doctors will take proper measures in this regard after observing her condition as she has chronic kidney and liver problems. Earlier, Khaleda was admitted to Evercare Hospital  in the early hours of Saturday as she suddenly fell ill. A ring (stent) was placed in the main artery of her heart on Saturday afternoon.   Khaleda, a 76-year-old former prime minister, has long been suffering from various ailments, including liver cirrhosis, arthritis, diabetes, kidney, lung and eye problems.