Used syringes, bandages, plastic bottles and leftovers litter the pitch-black water of an open stinky drain surrounding a building. If you have a closer look, you may also discover human faeces floating at a place or two. The condition of the toilets inside the building is also terrible. They are dark, damp, filthy, and garbage is scattered in the corners. The toilets, flooded with excreta, would offer you nothing but a gut-wrenching stench. The staircase is filled with dirt as well. Dry cough, betel leaf spit and other wastes are abundant there. It may sound bizarre but the building is in fact a government hospital treating patients with infectious diseases like chickenpox, rabies, hepatitis, viral fever, tetanus and HIV/AIDS. Because of its dealing with such communicable diseases, the authorities of the Infectious Diseases Hospital (IDH) should have given top priority to cleanliness and hygiene, but it seems that they are ignoring the issue altogether. “Toilets are sodden and unclean....they are not cleaned regularly. We have to cover our noses [with something] whenever we use them,” Jyotsna Begum, a patient's attendant, told The Daily Star correspondents when they visited the hospital in the capital's Mohakhali recently. Sheikh Shah Alam, father of a boy who was admitted there with chickenpox, said both patients and attendants had to use the same toilets. Another attendant said there was no separate toilet for male and female patients and their relatives. The Daily Star correspondents saw no soaps, let alone any toilet paper inside the toilets. Although signboards on each floor of the hospital request people not to spit, there were betel leaf spit and dry cough at numerous places. Just outside the building, some children and teenagers were playing cricket near the compound adjacent to the drain, oblivious to the risk of getting infected from the water there. A man was urinating into the drain. The cricket ball was frequently falling into the drain water and those young boys were playing with the same ball. “We play cricket here almost every day. The drain is always dirty. Whenever the ball goes there, we collect it using a paper or a piece of cloth and then start playing again after cleaning the ball,” said one of the boys, Saiful Islam, who studies in class-IV in a local school. Another boy, present there, echoed Saiful's statement. Asked about the hygiene issue, both the boys looked confused. There was ankle-deep mud at the entrance to the hospital. The road to the building was also in a poor shape. Contacted, health experts said such negligence over hygiene on the part of the authorities might put the health of patients, their attendants and those who live near the hospital at risk. When Prof Mahmudur Rahman, former director of the Institute of Epidemiology, Disease Control and Research, was briefed about the condition of the IDH, he said such an unhealthy environment was not acceptable in any hospital, especially in a hospital dealing with infectious diseases. “Such an unhealthy environment helps various diseases to spread,” he said, adding that, ”If a general hospital is cleaned twice a day, the hospital [IDH] in Mohakhali should be cleaned four times every day.” The hospital authorities should take immediate steps to keep the environment of the hospital and the surrounding areas clean and hygienic, he said. Contacted, Prof Shah Alam Talukder, who joined as the hospital superintendent in February, acknowledged the problem. “The entire hospital is facing problem. We [doctors and staffers] are also facing the risk of getting infected. But we have nothing to do because we have a huge crisis of manpower, mainly cleaners,” he told The Daily Star on April 30. As his attention was drawn to the patients and their attendants using the same toilets, he said the practice could be dangerous. “But what can we do now? This is the system of this hospital. We have to change this system. We are trying our best to keep the hospital clean,” he said. Shah Alam also said he had already written to his higher authorities for recruiting 48 new doctors and staffers and that he would be writing to them soon again about the poor condition of hygiene at the hospital. He emphasised on constructing a separate building for outdoor patients to avoid infection. He then claimed almost all of the hospital land had been grabbed by local influential people over the years. Currently, there is no ambulance service at the hospital, said sources there. Initially, it had three ambulances. One of them, however, went out of order about 15 years ago. The other two suffered the same fate around six to 10 years ago, a hospital source said. A few months ago, the government handed over a new ambulance to the hospital authorities. But the vehicle remains out of operation due to lack of driver and fuel allocation, the source added. Asked, Shah Alam claimed they did not get adequate allocation for the driver and fuel. The government established the 100-bed hospital in Mohakhali in 1972 for treating tetanus, measles, diphtheria, viral hepatitis, chickenpox and hydrophobia diseases. Later, the hospital began providing care to HIV patients. The seven-storey building is the country's lone hospital where beds are available for patients round the clock with a bed occupancy rate of around 62 to 72 percent, IDH sources said. Source
