At Dhaka’s Mugda Hospital, doctors no longer know where to turn: three of the facility’s 10 floors are overcrowded with patients suffering from an unprecedented dengue epidemic.
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Nupur Akter, 21, tries to feed her little sister Payel, who no longer has an appetite. Two weeks ago, the six-year-old was rushed to hospital after he was “shaking uncontrollably”.
Since then, Nupur Akter has been waiting for signs of improvement. But he had the impression that the little girl had “become weaker”.
This year, the dengue fever epidemic, a mosquito-borne disease, is the worst ever recorded in Bangladesh, with a record 1,030 deaths and more than 210,000 hospital-confirmed cases since the beginning of 2023. For the entire previous year was The disease had killed 281 people in the country.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), dengue fever is increasing due to climate change.
This disease, endemic to tropical areas, causes high fever, headache, nausea, vomiting, muscle pain and, in the most severe cases, bleeding that can lead to death.
According to Mugda Hospital boss Mohammad Niamatuzzaman, overwhelmed general practitioners had to call their colleagues in specialist services.
“It is an emergency, but a long-term emergency,” Mr Niamatuzzaman told AFP, adding that his facility had already recorded 158 dengue-related deaths this year, five times more than last year.
“It scares me”
More than 1,000 patients, including 200 with dengue fever, are currently being treated across three floors in Mugda Hospital, which has almost 400 beds available. Thousands more are treated as outpatients.
Mohammad Sabuj, a 40-year-old jeweler from Konapara on the outskirts of Dhaka, was rushed to hospital and has since recovered. He is concerned that “almost every household” in his neighborhood has a dengue patient.
“Three of the four workers in my workshop had a fever,” says the father of three boys.
One of his friends, a doctor, died. “The fact that a doctor couldn’t save himself scares me,” he adds, “if something happens to me at my age, what will happen to my family and my children?”
Although hospital treatment is free, the responsibility for certain medications remains with patients. The public medical analysis center is overloaded and private laboratories are too expensive for a large part of the population.
Abdul Hakim, 38 years old and a construction worker, watches over his two-year-old son. “I lost my job since the day my son had a fever,” says this father of two, whose salary is the family’s sole source of livelihood.
“A loan” to save his son
“I pay for tests, medication and other hospital costs thanks to a loan (…) to be able to treat him,” he admits.
A quarter of dengue patients in Mugda Hospital are children. Children. Overall, around 10% of deaths occur in children under the age of fifteen.
There have been cases of dengue fever in Bangladesh since the 1960s, but the first documented outbreak occurred in 2000. Scientists attribute the 2023 outbreak to erratic rainfall and warmer temperatures during the monsoon, which created ideal breeding conditions for mosquitoes.
According to the WHO, dengue fever and other diseases such as chikungunya, yellow fever or Zika, which are transmitted by mosquitoes of the Aedes genus, also known as tiger mosquitoes, are spreading faster and further due to climate change.
The head of Mugda Hospital emphasizes that his facility is now accepting patients from rural areas where dengue fever has never been reported before.
This is the case of Mr Alep Kari, who comes from rural Shariatpur district, where the healthcare system is overwhelmed.
“I had rarely heard of this disease in my life,” said the 65-year-old man, whose wife, who also suffers from dengue fever, is also in the hospital.
“This is the first time we have had this fever in our village,” he wonders. “Many were contaminated.”