ICU lying unused in Sunamganj hospital

SYLHET, Aug 24: The 250-bed Sunamganj District Sadar Hospital, the prime hospital for 2.4 million people's medicare services, has been suffering various problems including staff shortage and others for long. Moreover, the newly established ICU unit is lying unused.
Built at a cost of Taka 25 million by the Public Works Department (PWD), the 10-bed unit can't be used mainly due to the absence of physicians, nurses and other staff. This is why the patients have to move to the Osmani Medical College Hospital in Sylhet or to other private facilities.
Only 31 physicians against 66 sanctioned posts have been serving the hospital.
Only one physician has been serving in each departments of surgery, gynae and ENT although there are two posts in each of these departments. Besides, only 16 medical officers are at work against the sanctioned posts of 32.
The X-ray machine has been lying out of order for a month. A number of patients alleged that the physicians often try to avoid the serious patients on the plea of lack of facilities. They just refer them to Sylhet.
There is no treatment for the heart patients. The ICU unit cannot help the critical patients here.
An official at the hospital, however, said there is no cardiologist, but we try to provide some treatment to the heart patients. He said normally the patients are not referred to Sylhet, except some genuine cases.
But, even then we try our best to manage the patients at the hospital, he claimed while admitting delay in starting the ICU. We have already informed the higher authority about the shortage of physicians and others, he added. forsylhet@gmail.com