Fifty-eight-day-old Hafsa Jahan is struggling to breathe. She was admitted to Matlab South Upazila Health Complex in Chandpur last Saturday after developing pneumonia. She is supposed to receive nebuliser treatment several times a day to ease her breathing.
But because there was no electricity at the hospital, she could not receive the treatment properly. The ceiling fan above her bed was also not working. The heat was making her breathing difficulties worse. Her mother, Kamrun Nahar, was holding her sick daughter and waiting for the electricity to return. This was the situation on Sunday.
Like Hafsa's mother, mothers and children in different parts of the country, including Patiya in Chattogram and Raipur in Lakshmipur, are also having to wait for electricity.
Mofassir, a one-and-a-half-year-old pneumonia patient in Patiya, is supposed to receive nebuliser treatment six times a day. But he received it only three times last Saturday. In Raipur, four-year-old Minu Akter, who has pneumonia, needs nebulisation four times a day, but the treatment cannot be provided regularly because of power outages.
Other healthcare services are also being disrupted at upazila-level hospitals.
When electricity goes out, nebulisers, X-ray machines and ECG services stop at some hospitals. Pathology tests are also suspended. In some hospitals, power cuts during surgery have forced staff to switch on generators. In other hospitals, generators are available but there is no fuel.
As a result, patients and their relatives who come to hospitals for treatment have to wait for the electricity to return. During power outages, patients and their attendants also have to endure extreme heat.
These conditions were found during visits to one district hospital and 13 upazila health complexes across the country on Saturday and Sunday, and through conversations with patients, relatives, physicians and healthcare workers.
Alongside a gas shortage, Bangladesh has been facing an electricity shortage for more than a month. Load-shedding decreases occasionally when it rains and increases when temperatures rise. Initially, the power cuts were entirely outside Dhaka. Since the night of 12 August, load-shedding has also been enforced in Dhaka following government instructions. Although the plan was to impose one hour of load-shedding once a day in an area of Dhaka, the schedule is not being followed.
According to data from the Bangladesh Power Development Board (PDB) and Power Grid PLC (PGCB), electricity generation is falling short of demand because of fuel shortages. The effects have now reached upazila-level hospitals.
