The hospital is comprised of a “short stay” ward, a “longer stay” ward, a “special care” ward (ICU), and an HIV ward. Pretty much all people who come to the hospital come for diarrhea and dehydration-related illnesses (cholera, E. coli, rotavirus, and invasive diarrhea). The people who have other problems (e.g. respiratory infections) also have concomitant dehydration. All the services the hospital provides are entirely free, but they don’t have extensive equipment (no ventilators, cardiac machines, etc) and so the majority of people are just on IV saline and ORS. It used to cost 20Tk for the facilities, but they had too many problems finding people change that they gave up – hilarious reason to stop asking for money.
On average during the dry season, they have approximately 200-300 patients per day and in the rainy season, 450-600. In 2007 after a major flood, they had 1045 patients in one day!! In a city of 10 million people, this is a small amount, but just in sheer numbers, it’s HUGE! Most years they treat over 100,000 people. Also impressive is the fact the hospital is entirely computer-based – there is no paper used anywhere. The doctors use handheld PDAs which are directly and wirelessly linked to a computer system and a back-up system.
So Dhaka has a reeeeeaaally low HIV prevalence (less than 0.01%) and even though there is an HIV ward, I don’t know how much it’s used. UNAIDS estimates that ~13,000 people in the country are HIV-positive, but the actual number of people who have been tested and know are less than 2,000. ICDDR, B has 10 beds for HIV patients, but only 3 were full when I visited…
I plan on seeing more of the hospital and getting a better tour, but that will be soon to come!
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