Sajjad, Atiq and Rasel came to the emergency unit of the National Institute of Traumatology and Orthopedic Rehabilitation (NITOR) in Dhaka on Thursday after being injured in road crashes involving motorcycles during the Eid-ul-Fitr holidays.
On the night before Eid, 17-year-old Atiqul Rahman was on his bike with four of his friends in pursuit on a Barisal road leading to a terrible crash, his uncle Md Zakaria said.
The uncle said that Atiqul was first taken to Barisal Medical College and was later transferred to NITOR.
Several bones in Atiqul’s chest and arm were broken. The fingers of the right hand were also numb, the uncle added.
He is one of the 648 patients who came to the hospital during Eid holidays.
The hospital barely had an empty bed on Thursday and new patients were coming in every five minutes, with half of them involved in motorcycle accidents.
The number of patients at NITOR increased during the Eid holidays this year.
Sajjad Hussain, 22, left for a bike tour of Sylhet on Wednesday night. He was lying on a bed with blood all over his body at the hospital. He was screaming in serious pain.
Russell, 25, might lose his leg due to a crash he was involved in during the Eid holidays, said Md Anwar Ullah, a resident doctor at NITOR.
“This patient needs blood right now. When he fell on the road with his bike, a car ran over his leg. He is in critical condition,” the doctor added.
Dr Md Mozaffar Hossain, deputy director of NITOR, said the hospital currently had 1000 beds and all of them were occupied.
“We could not give beds to 165 patients who are still receiving treatment at the hospital. More than 100 new patients were admitted every day since Eid day and till Wednesday,” he said.
Altogether 157 people came to the emergency unit of the hospital on the day before Eid, and 256 on Eid day, hospital sources said. A total of 235 people came to the hospital the next day.
On Monday, 62 surgeries were performed at the hospital. The figure had been 45 on Eid day. On Wednesday, 40 surgeries were performed, sources confirmed.
The hospital has 700 nurses and 256 physicians and surgeons who are providing services in regular shifts. A team of 30 people worked in three shifts during the Eid holidays.
Before the operating theater, this reporter talked to the wife of Ataur Rahman, 40.
She said the family had been involved in a crash that left her husband needing knee surgery. They were waiting for their turn in the operating theater.
Dr Mozaffar Hossain said the number of doctors during Eid holidays usually remains low but this year the number of patients had increased. He attributed a large number of accidents to bike crashes.
Shanaz Sarker, nursing supervisor (Addl) at NITOR, told Dhaka Tribune that only two nurses were providing care to 84 patients in a single ward. The nurses also worked in the operating theater, dressing, and emergency units.
“And there are 29 operating theaters at the hospital,” she added.
Most of the patients who came to the hospital during the Eid holidays were male and young in age, sources said.
Meanwhile, relatives of some patients alleged that none of the doctors had visited the general ward in the last five days. The hospital authorities refuted the allegation.
However, they said that normalcy would return to the hospital on Saturday.
Mozammel Hoque Chowdhury, secretary general of Bangladesh Jatri Kalyan Samity, said that the number of casualties might increase in the coming days like previous years as drivers went berserk on the highways during holidays. Analysis indicated that small vehicles, including motorcycles, were responsible for 80% of the accidents, he added.
