The government doesn’t have any record of the number of patients being treated at home for mosquito borne virus dengue. As a result there is no definite count on how many people actually contracted the disease this year.
Majority of the patients, when tested positive for dengue are sent back home if their condition isn’t critical.
On Jul 31, 12-year-old Zaara was diagnosed with the virus but since her platelet-count was in order, the doctors sent her back home, advising plenty of fluid consumption according to her weight and age.
The same prescription was given to journalist Hasan Imam’s seven-year-old son. Doctors prescribed paracetamols and fluid for him and he recovered at home within a week.
Thousands of such dengue cases are going unrecorded as the patients don’t need to be admitted and a prescription of paracetamol and adequate fluid is enough for recovery.
A Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS) employee wishing to remain anonymous said that they don’t have any record of the dengue patients treated at home either in capital Dhaka or outside.
He said that they only have the records of 12 state-owned and autonomous and 29 private hospitals in Dhaka.
Ticket sale at the Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University (BSMMU) dengue cell starts at 2:30 pm by which the Outdoor Department shuts down and continues till 8 am when it re-opens.
Several doctors and employees at the hospitals said that the count of patients is way more than the tickets sold at the cell.
They added that if 10,000 patients get a check-up only a 1000 are admitted while the rest are sent home with prescriptions.
According to them, as of Aug 22, 5,505 patients received treatment at the BSMMU outdoor and none of them were admitted.
“We only have records of patients who are hospitalised and that’s considered the government count,” a DGHS Health Emergency Operation and Control Room Assistant Director Ayesha Akter told Bangla Tribune.
She added that they still can’t identify those who went home with a prescription from outdoor but the office was working to make sure that they can do it in the future.
Meanwhile, doctors said that the original count of dengue is bound to be 20 times that of the government count.
“Only 30 to 35 percent of the patients need to be hospitalised. The rest are advised to get treated at home,” said Chattogram Divisonal Health Director Hassan Shahriar Kabir.
Dhaka University Medical College Hospital (DMCH) resident doctor Sheikh Abdullah echoed and said that around 70 percent of their dengue patients were sent home with prescription as they didn’t need to be hospitalised.
Meanwhile, Dhaka University Medical College Hospital (DMCH) Medicine Department Assistant Professor Hasan Imam said that around 400 dengue patients receive treatment at the outdoor everyday but most aren’t admitted.
“In the last three months and average of 5,698 dengue patients were admitted at DMCH,” hospital Director AKM Nasir Uddin told Bangla Tribune.
He added that there are over 5,000 more that came with minor symptoms and not hospitalised.