Test seekers agitate at Mugda hospital

Angry COVID-19 test seekers staged an agitation at Mugda General Hosptial Monday morning as the hospital declined to test them hours after their waiting.

Several hundred people held the protest in front of the hospital, one of the capital’s dedicated COVID-19 hospitals, as the authorities said that they would not be tested on the day.

Md Jumor Ali is a cancer patient from the city’s Basabo area who was being treated at the National Institute of Cancer Research and Hospital in Mohakhali.

Lately doctors there have asked him to submit a medical certificate that he does not have COVID-19 before further treatment.

Jumor and his son Nur Alam have been waiting in queues at the Mugda hospital for two days for the COVID-19 test but to no avail.

Nur Alam said that as they had failed on Sunday his father and he joined the queue early Monday so that he could have the test.

‘After more than eight hours of waiting the authorities told us that there would be no more test today,’ Nur Alam told New Age.

Another test seeker Nazmul said that the hospital authorities were supposed to issue 100 tickets daily for the test, but they gave only 10 tickets to people in the queue and the rest were passed to others, including police, nurses etc. inside the hospital.

The aggrieved people demonstrated for an hour but the hospital authorities did not serve any more tickets for those waiting in the line.

There were several hundred people in the queue who, after getting furious, demonstrated before the main gate of the hospital, Alam added.

The hospital’s COVID-19 treatment committee chairman Manilal Aich Litu told New Age that they had the capacity to test only around 190 samples a day.

‘There are over 350 coronavirus patients in the hospital and they, too, need several tests in order to determine whether they have recovered or not,’ said Manilal.

The hospital first determines, he said, COVID-19 suspects using a screening procedure and then carries out the main test on the suspects.

Dhaka Medical College Hospital and Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University, two other major facilities that perform COVID-19 tests, are also struggling with the rush of test seekers with limited testing capacities.

Many with symptoms come to a hospital to make sure if they are infected or not while others come to have the test so they can visit doctors for other health complications as doctors now refuse to attend patients without the ‘no COVID-19’ medical certificate.

‘But if the dedicated COVID-19 hospitals do not allow us for the test, then how can we get such certificates and visit doctors for other health difficulties?’ asked a patient’s relative.

Three major COVID-19 testing hospitals — DMCH, BSMMU and Mugda General Hospital — have the capacity to do around 700 tests a day, doctors said.

But these hospitals have been witnessing several thousand test seekers every day most of whom have to be turned down by the hospitals.

News Courtesy: www.newagebd.net