One out of the 95,319 patients admitted in 2013 died every hour at the country’s biggest public healthcare facility, Dhaka Medical College and Hospital (DMCH).
The information was retrieved from the recently published Health Bulletin 2014 of Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS).
According to the bulletin, 8866 patients had died while undergoing treatment at DMCH.
More than 50% of total patients died due to transport accident, stroke, fracture and intracranial injury. The number of deaths on these four accounts was 1565, 1284, 890 and 882 respectively.
The percentage of death at DMCH was the highest, 9.3%, among all the public medical college hospitals.
Brigadier General Mustafizur Rahman, director of DMCH told the Dhaka Tribune that among all the public medical college hospitals, DMCH received the largest chunk of critical patients. Most of the patients were first admitted to other public or private hospitals and later shifted to DMCH at terminal stage. That is why the number of death was higher than other public medical college hospitals.
However, several senior officials of DGHS said, while it was true that DMCH dealt with hundreds of critical patients, the number of deaths could be curtailed if the senior doctors were more serious.
It is often alleged that in some departments of DMCH, junior doctors provide emergency treatment to critical patients in absence of senior doctors. The juniors are often not in the position to take necessary decisions quickly during urgency, they added.
According to the bulletin, the total number of deaths recorded at 12 public medical college hospitals including DMCH in 2013 was 43,898.
Among them, 7508 deaths were counted at Chittagong Medical College Hospital, 5185 at Rajshahi, 4318 at Sylhet, 4316 at Rangpur, 3270 at Barisal, 2881 at Bogra, 1955 at Salimullah, 1783 at Faridpur, 1678 at Comilla,1448 at Dinajpur and 690 deaths at Suhrwardy.
Among the hospitals, the reason for highest number of deaths was birth asphyxia 10.8% in Chittagong, intra-ventricular haemorrhage of foetus and newborn 27.95% at Comilla, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease with acute exarbation 6.73% at Barisal, vascular syndromes of brain in cerebro-vascular diseases 17.95% at Suhrwardy, vascular syndromes of brain in cerebrovascular diseases 23.89% at Faridpur, cardiac arrest 7.01% at Salimullah, intrauterine hypoxia 12.51% at Mymensingh, cerebro-vascular diseases 11.98% at Bagura, cerebellar stroke disease 20.17% at Dinajpur, stroke 9.36% at Sylhet, and stroke 24.69% at Rajshahi Medical College hospital.