30-year-old Sajib at Dhaka Medical College Hospital after rubber bullets pierced through his left thigh at Shanir Akhra on his way back from Kanchpur Bridge to Zatrabari in the capital. — FE Photo Mugda General Hospital wore a deserted look on Saturday. One might mistake it for an abandoned place, seeing the empty ticket counters, outdoor units, and corridors.
Inside, a handful of patients, their attendants and healthcare providers -- doctors, nurses and other staff -- were scrambling to cope with a changing situation at the hospital and out on the streets to get and provide emergency services.
"Many of the doctors are unable to come to the hospital amid the curfew. There is hardly any transport to find," said Dr. Anwar Kabir, who was on duty around 11:30pm and had reached his workplace by a rickshaw from Mohammadpur.
Another doctor of the emergency ward of the same healthcare facility, wishing not to be named, said he went there by an ambulance. "The hospital authority has not made any arrangement to facilitate the transport of doctors and nurses to the hospital."
Only emergency services, for example healthcare, food transport, and fire services, are outside the purview of the curfew enforced by the government in attempts to tackle street violence that began on Thursday centring on the demand for reforms to the quota system in government jobs.
While general patients have been refraining from going to hospitals, considering risks and safety in the current situation, patients who need immediate attention and those, who have got caught between protesters and the police and have sustained injuries, are being rushed to public hospitals, such as the Mugda Hospital.
They are not many in number, compared to the thousands of patients the government hospitals in the capital deal with on a daily basis.
But serving them has become a challenge, with logistics, which have become so imperative in our daily lives, being non-functional, such as Internet, transport, ATMs and mobile financial services.
At the emergency ward, a third-year medical student was assisting the doctors amid a shortage of manpower.
A nurse of the post operative unit said she had been serving beyond her official duty schedule. "I've come to the hospital much before my roaster started on instructions of the hospital administration.
"General OT (operating theatre) usually remains open until 8:00pm. Now, it is 11:30pm and operations are still going on."
A cardiac patient was admitted to the Mugda hospital in a critical condition on Saturday evening. The attendant accompanying her seemed exhausted trying to manage a health crisis amid a national crisis. She was having to manage everything associated with the treatment alone as the hospital, like any other state-run hospitals, was being run by fewer of the already inadequate support staff.
"Other family members could not come to lend support due to the curfew," she lamented.
The patient's attendant was also worried about the inaccessibility of cash in the absence of mobile financial services and most of the ATMs non-functional due to the Internet blackout.
The cash problem is acute at private hospitals where charges are much higher and bills are mostly paid digitally.
Dr Titu Mia, director general of medical education of the health directorate, said public hospitals had a system in place to ensure supply of surgical materials, medicines and other necessary things but private hospitals were struggling to get those as most of them relied on online payment methods.
Talking to The FE, a doctor of Japan Bangladesh Hospital confirmed the hurdles that private hospitals were facing regarding payments and supply of logistics.
Meanwhile, hospital staffers, patients and their attendants were going about things despite the risk of violence.
Preferring anonymity, a staffer of the emergency ward of the Mugda Hospital said security at the entrance had been strengthened, with the gate shuttered all the time. Only patients and their attendants were allowed in on queries, he added.
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