Burning to death or fire incident has become almost a common phenomenon as several thousand people fall victims to such incidents every year and several hundred of them lose their lives, reports BSS.
According to available statistics at the Burn and Plastic Surgery Unit of Dhaka Medical Colleges Hospital (DMCH), more than 6,000 people across the country suffer burn injuries and among them, over 600 people die every year.
Following data analysis, experts viewed that people usually suffer burn injuries from cooking burner, hot water and electric short circuit. Apart from this, there are some other reasons of becoming fire victims. Fire can also originate from mosquito coil, burning cigarettes and hot oil.
Throwing petrol bombs on running vehicles has also emerged as one of the deadliest components of fire accidents in the country. During the political unrest in the country last year, many people had become fire victims when miscreants threw petrol bombs on public vehicles.
Chief Coordinator of Burn and Plastic Surgery Unit of DMCH Dr Samanta Lal Sen told the correspondent that they had provided treatment for 98 fire victims in 73 days from December 26, 2013 to January 9 this year.
Among them, 22 succumbed to their injuries while rest 42 got well. Of the total victims, 25 per cent sustained fire injuries during the winter season, he added.
Dr Sen said cases of fire victims can be reduced to a significant level if people got aware of the accidents that claim many lives every year. When asked he said his unit is working hard with minimum manpower to provide best possible services for such victims who came to DMCH for taking treatment.
"We could have handled more victims efficiently if there were more manpower in the unit," he added.
Enayet Hossain, station officer of fire service Lalbagh station, said they have been facing serious problems since long while extinguishing fire in the capital city. Due to lack of open water reservoir in the city they can not douse the fire quickly.
Besides, narrow space of lanes and sub-lanes and traffic congestion also posed as hurdles to reaching the spot in time to douse fire and rescue the victims.
The government on January 9 last declared the Plastic and Burn Unit of DMCH as an institution. The unit started its journey in 2003 with 50 beds and later in 2009 the number of beds increased to 100.
But, the capacity of the unit has not been increased to a level that could enable the unit to handle huge number of patients every day. While visiting the unit, this correspondent found that only 62 physicians of the unit are struggling to treat 334 patients who got admitted following serious burn injuries.
