Hospital
Apollo Clinic Partners with JMI Group to Bring World-Class Healthcare to Dhaka
Indian hospital chain Apollo has collaborated with JMI Group to establish and operate the Apollo Clinic in Dhaka, ensuring access to world-class treatment for patients in the region.
The license agreement for the partnership was signed between JMI Specialized Hospital Limited and Apollo Health and Lifestyle Limited, according to a press release.
The signing ceremony, held at Hotel Pan Pacific Sonargaon on Tuesday, marked the official collaboration between Md Abdur Razzaq, Founding Managing Director and Chairman of JMI Specialized Hospital Limited, and Tarun Gulati, Head of Franchise Business at Apollo Health & Lifestyle Limited, it said.
JMI Specialized Hospital, a subsidiary of JMI Group, has received the license to operate "Apollo Clinic" in Dhaka. The clinic will boast state-of-the-art technologies, featuring the country's leading physicians, clinicians, and management staff. With an expected annual capacity of serving more than one million patients, the Apollo Clinic in Dhaka is set to become a healthcare hub in Bangladesh.
Chairman of JMI Group, M Jabed Iqbal Pathan, expressed his enthusiasm for the collaboration, stating, "This partnership with India's best hospital brand, Apollo, is a testament to our commitment to bringing qualitative changes to the healthcare sector in Bangladesh. Our goal is to offer world-class healthcare services within the country, eliminating the need for patients to seek treatment abroad."
Founder and Managing Director of JMI Group, Md Abdur Razzaq, emphasized the focus on quality healthcare at a fair price. He announced plans to extend the services of the Apollo Clinic brand across the country, promoting accessibility to top-notch medical care.
MTarun Gulati of Apollo Health Lifestyle Limited highlighted the strategic partnership, stating, "JMI is one of the best healthcare brands in Bangladesh, and we are excited to collaborate with them. We aim to ensure state-of-the-art diagnostic, consultation, and health check-up facilities, gradually expanding our business with JMI."
Dr Tamjeed Alam, CEO of JMI Specialized Hospital, envisaged the collaboration as creating a healthcare ecosystem where excellence is ingrained. He stated, "Apollo Clinic, Dhaka, will become a beacon of hope and healing, offering world-class treatment within the country."
The license agreement signing ceremony was moderated by Major (Retd.) Abdullah Al Faruqi, Deputy General Manager of Administration Department of JMI Group. Key personnel from both organizations and leading physicians were present at the event, marking a milestone in Bangladesh's healthcare landscape.
Khulna Cancer hospital project sees slow progress
Despite the scheduled completion date having lapsed, the Khulna 100-bed full-fledged Cancer Hospital project is still far from completion, with only 21% of the work done over the past two years.
According to the Public Works Department, the cancer hospital was supposed to be completed in June this year, now a proposal has been sent to the ministry to extend the project duration till December 2024 as the work has not been completed within the stipulated time.
The Development Project Proforma (DPP) cost was Tk 175.72 crore and of these, Tk 82.36 crore was allocated for the construction of the 15-storey building with two basement floors.
Under the government’s ‘Establishment of 100-bed Full-fledged Cancer Centre in Government Medical College Hospital in Divisional City’ project’, there will be three—cancer, kidney and heart—units at the hospital.
"Free Cervical Cancer Screening to Prevent Cervical Cancer to Save Lives of At-Risk Population"
Under the project, the 15-storey specialized hospital for treatment of cancer, kidney and heart patients will be established on 23250.46 square feet of land behind the outdoor department of Khulna Medical College and Hospital.
The government signed an agreement with MBPL and SNBPL—two contractor firms on October 31, 2021.
Cancer unit will be established from Bagement-2 to 6th floor with Linear Accelerator, CT Stimulator, Chemotherapy and Brachytherapy while Kidney unit will be established on the 7th floor to 11th floor with kidney dialysis unit, kidney transplant OT, post-transplant and ICU.
Meanwhile, the heart unit will be set up on the 11th floor to 14th floor with CCU, ICU, Cardiac OT, and Pediatric Cardiac Surgery and Cath lab.
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Besides, a ramp, moving stairs, lift for Covid-19, Sewerage Treatment Plant (STP), 300-KVA power sub-station, 1000-KVA generator, lift, and firefighting system will be constructed under the project.
Sheikh Daud Haider, owner of the contractor firm SN Builders Private Limited, said the construction work was delayed due to various complexities including land acquisition but the construction work of the project is now going on in full swing.
Sheikh Golam Kuddus, project manager of the contractor firm, said the work of two basements has been completed and now the work will end speedily,” he said.
Amit Kumar Biswas, executive engineer of Public Works Department-1, said “Already 21% work has been completed and currently the construction work of the building is going on in full swing.”
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In 2019, the Executive Committee of the National Economic Council (Ecnec) approved a project involving Tk 2,388.40 crore to set up a 100-bed full-fledged cancer centre in each government medical college hospital in every divisional city.
The Ecnec cleared a total of eight projects with an estimated cost of Tk8,968.08 crore.
Of the approved projects, five are new and the remaining three are revised ones.
Then the project tenure was set from October 2019 to September 2022.
Patients underserved as KMCH overwhelmed with bed shortage, inadequate manpower
Patients underserved as KMCH overwhelmed with bed shortage, inadequate manpower
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.
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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.
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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
Fakhrul discharged from hospital
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.
Beds run out at Beijing hospital as COVID brings more sick
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.
Pelé back in hospital to regulate medication
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.
Strike on Ukrainian maternity hospital kills 2-day-old baby
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.
Patients suffer as power disruption cripples services at Sher-e-Bangla Medical College Hospital
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.
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“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.
Former BCL leader beaten by up Naldanga upazila chairman dies at hospital
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.
Bangladesh opens first super specialized hospital; PM urges doctors to be nice to patients
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.