Cox's Bazar Sadar Hospital: ICU closed for shortage of nurses

Only two months after its inauguration, the intensive care unit (ICU) at Cox's Bazar Sadar Hospital was closed due to a shortage of skilled nurses. 

At least four skilled nurses are regularly needed for the ICU whereas there is only one nurse now, say sources of the hospital, which was built in the British era.

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Risking their lives, patients requiring ICU treatment have to go to Chittagong town, which is around 150km away. 

Following longstanding demands of different sections of people and organisations of the district, the 250-bed hospital got a six-bed ICU on May 25. Health Minister Mohammed Nasim inaugurated the ICU through a videoconference from Chittagong. 

In his speech, the minister said it was the first ICU at a district-level hospital in the country.

The activities of ICU started under the supervision of the hospital superintendent, Pu Chaw Nu, who is now civil surgeon of Cox's Bazar. 

A team of physicians and nurses was appointed to the ICU after they were trained specially for ICU in Dhaka and Chittagong.

Pu Chaw Nu told this correspondent that equipment worth Tk 6 crore was purchased in 2008 for running the ICU. But it was not possible then to make the ICU operational due to various problems and bureaucratic red tape. 

For a lack of skilled nurses, the ICU had to suspend operation on July 29, he said. 

Anaesthetist Bidhan Pal, in-charge of the ICU, said four nurses, specially trained for the ICU, along with nine other nurses of the hospital had been transferred elsewhere in July. At present, there is only one nurse who has special training for the ICU.

But it is impossible to run the ICU with one trained nurse. For this reason, the ICU was shut down temporarily, he said.

Bulbule Jannat, a schoolteacher and child organiser, took her elderly mother to the hospital on August 22. Doctors at the emergency unit advised her to admit the patient to an ICU.

But as the ICU was closed, the patient had to be taken to Chittagong. 

Abu Morshed Chowdhury, president of Cox's Bazar Civil Society, expressed his disappointment over the closure of the ICU and requested the health minister to take necessary measures for reopening the facility as soon as possible.

Moinul Hasan, editor of a local daily and a college teacher, said at least 50 patients die in the district every year only because there is no ICU at any hospital in the district.

Many of them die on their ways to Chittagong, he added.