A Rare Example
We are pleasantly surprised by a news item published Sunday in an important Bangla daily of Dhaka. It tells a poignant but heartwarming story of a team of doctors at Suhrawardy hospital led by Dr Saeeda Akhtar. They saved the life of a critically ill patient on the night of Eid-ul-Fitr. The patient Suraiya Sultana was under the treatment of Dr Akhtar for about 6 weeks at the hospital with gynae problems. Her condition started deteriorating on the night of Eid. Her doctor was informed at about midnight. She organised her team, rushed to the hospital and decided to operate upon the critically ill patient defying the odd of staff shortage. The doctors themselves pushed the trolley, arranged for blood transfusion and crossmatching and procured life saving drugs and medicines. By their timely intervention a valuable life was saved.
In any civilised country this act of goodness would be termed as normal or routine duty of doctors. But the scenario in Bangladesh is different. Here, even on normal weekends it is difficult to get doctors to attend to critically ill patients in times of emergency. We have had enough complaints from patients of government hospitals against wrong treatment and apathy of doctors and other hospital staff towards them. Likes of Dr Saeeda Akhtar help restore public confidence in government hospitals. Could we now urge hospital management to make it a point to have special arrangements to treat critically ill patients during holidays?
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