Editorial

The hopelessly ignored ones

Case for auto-active emergency care
These patients are no one's responsibility. At least that's what it seems like. They landed in Dhaka Medical College Hospital (DMCH) compound without any identity and nobody either to stand by them or look after them. They are also the kind of patients who are thrown by the wayside in an accident, picked up and left before the emergency unit of the hospital with none to attend to them. We are talking about those people who, as reported by The Daily Star last Tuesday, become helpless by the turn of events and face a gruesome fate that no human being deserves.

At first being brought to the hospital in a critical and unconscious state and then left unattended for days on end is not only unacceptable, but also inhuman. And the reasons like there is no one to pay for their treatment or no one to take their responsibility or there is shortage of doctors to attend them sound very unfortunate to say the least. What was the fault of an unidentified 28-year old woman who was brought with severe head injuries caused by a road accident and was left unconscious on the hospital corridor without any treatment for several days? What was the fault of another woman, around 55 years of age, who after lying on a bed with a saline apparatus hanging over her died after four days?

The Social Welfare Department claims that it often provides these patients with financial help, but there is no adequate fund for their treatment. On the other hand, the doctors claim that they and the nurses are often overwhelmed by the huge number of patients they have to attend to, which can result in lack of treatment for them. Whatever the reasons are, the reality now tells us that a separate stand by emergency unit for these hopelessly ignored people must be formed at DMCH, especially since the number of them is increasing. Whether the health ministry can be involved in this process is a possibility that can be looked into. Or may be both the health and social welfare ministry can jointly take measures and provide these poor, destitute people with at least basic medical facilities.