Dipankar Roy

The sprawling shrimp-processing factories along the Rupsha River once symbolised Khulna’s emergence as a major export-oriented industrial hub.

When several-month pregnant Raisa Begum fell ill and was admitted to Khulna Medical College Hospital (KMCH), she had to spend days in a cramped corner beside the staircase outside the maternal care and labour ward because no bed was available.

Dengue patients treated in corridors as 500-bed hospital nears 2,000 patients

The corridors of Khulna Medical College Hospital are no longer merely passageways for patients and attendants. They have become makeshift treatment spaces as dengue patients arrive in growing numbers.

Some patients are being treated at home or in hospital corridors as admissions rise

Around midnight on Saturday, Md Kutub Uddin received a frantic phone call from his son, Md Azmal Hossain, a first-year student at North Western University in Khulna.

The first thing one notices at dawn in the Sundarbans is not the green forest cover, the muddy riverbank or the waves breaking on the shore.

Disease outbreaks have destroyed shrimp across hundreds of farms in Batiaghata of Khulna, with farmers reporting estimated losses of more than Tk 15 crore over the past one to one-and-a-half months.