The government is set to revive intensive care unit (ICU) services at 10 district hospitals as authorities continue to struggle to provide critical care to a growing number of measles patients amid a spike in cases and deaths.
Health Minister Sardar Md Sakhawat Husain is scheduled to hand over one ventilator -- a life-support machine used in ICUs -- and five oxygen concentrators to each hospital at a programme at the Central Medical Stores Depot in Dhaka today, officials said.
Speaking to The Daily Star yesterday, Prof Zahid Raihan, additional director general of the Directorate General of Health Services, said the DGHS has personnel available to restart the ICUs and will gradually deploy additional staff for this purpose.
The 10 hospitals are: 250-Bed General Hospital in Tangail, Sunamganj, Gopalganj and Jashore; Sadar Hospital in Madaripur, Bagerhat and Chuadanga; General Hospital in Munshiganj and Narayanganj; and Sherpur District Hospital -- each of which has a 10-bed ICU.
Health Minister Sardar Md Sakhawat Husain is scheduled to hand over one ventilator and five oxygen concentrators to each hospital at a programme at the Central Medical Stores Depot in Dhaka today.
The development comes as five more suspected measles deaths were recorded in the 24 hours ending at 8:00am yesterday, taking the total number of suspected deaths to 389.
No confirmed deaths were recorded during this period, leaving the total number of confirmed deaths unchanged at 75, according to the DGHS.
Till yesterday, a total of 464 children have died from measles and measles-like symptoms.
As the country faces an unprecedented measles outbreak, many critically ill patients have been forced to travel to Dhaka because many districts do not have public hospitals with ICU facilities.
The condition of many children deteriorated further during the journey to Dhaka hospitals, overcrowding the facilities and putting immense pressure on the health workforce there, doctors at a city hospital told this correspondent recently.
According to the latest DGHS data, 74 government hospitals in 42 districts have 1,372 ICU beds -- meaning 22 districts still do not have any intensive care facilities. Of these beds, 758 (55 percent) are concentrated in 22 hospitals in Dhaka.
Of the total, ICUs with 240 beds were set up in 22 districts between 2020 and 2024 under the Covid-19 Emergency Response and Pandemic Preparedness project, largely funded by the World Bank.
Under the project launched in 2020, 10-bed ICUs were set up at 13 public hospitals in Cumilla, Noakhali, Gopalganj, Feni, Munshiganj, Narayanganj, Sherpur, Tangail, Jashore, Sunamganj, Chuadanga, Bagerhat and Madaripur.
Similar ICUs were also established at Shaheed Suhrawardy Medical College Hospital and nine medical college hospitals in Khulna, Dinajpur, Barishal, Sylhet, Faridpur, Tangail, Manikganj, Bogura and Cumilla.
Additionally, five-bed ICUs were set up at the Infectious Diseases Hospital in Dhaka and the Bangladesh Institute of Tropical and Infectious Diseases in Chattogram.
Over 1,000 staff members, including medical officers and technicians, were recruited to operate the units under the Tk 6,386.64 crore project.
However, their contracts expired in December 2024, six months after the project ended, and the interim government neither renewed their appointments nor hired replacements.
Although the authorities of most medical college hospitals and three district hospitals in Cumilla, Feni and Noakhali managed to keep their ICUs functional, those at 10 district hospitals remained non-functional, Abu Hussain Md Moinul Ahsan, director (hospital) of the Directorate General of Health Services, told this newspaper.
“As the need for ICUs at the district level is more acute for measles patients, we are reviving them.”
