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ICDDR,B opens a temporary urban treatment centre to cope with ongoing diarrhoeal disease demand

The ongoing rise in diarrhoeal disease in Dhaka since the middle of March resulted in ICDDR,B putting up tents in its car parks and take on over 150 additional staff to cope with the extra patient load. Despite this extra capacity we have had to put up beds in the hospital corridors when we received over 1000 patients. This emergency is more prolonged than that of 2007 and that we have already treated more patients than in 2007.

Despite this ICDDR,B has turned no-one away and has yet to lose a patient from simple dehydration. Sadly, as in 2007, we have had many instances of patients arriving dead despite passing a number of clinical centres on the way.

Given our technical competence and experience to treat large numbers of patients with diarrhoea, at the request of the Honourable Health Minister and Director General of the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, ICDDR,B opened up a new treatment centre in Mirpur on the other side of Dhaka, where a lot of new diarrhoeal cases are being identified.

This temporary 50 bed hospital began operations on Thursday April 30 inside a government Unani and Ayurvedic Degree College and Hospital, and is already saving lives within a day of its operation – patients arriving so dehydrated they wouldn’t have survived the journey to the Dhaka Hospital main campus. A number of improvements have been made to the facilities to improve both infrastructure required for high-volume diarrhoeal treatment, and facilities required for staff and patients.

This year, more than ever before, we need your donation to continue this lifesaving treatment. We depend on you to be able to continue saving lives. DONATE NOW.

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Heat, drought, and failed infrastructure lead to continuing high numbers of diarrhoeal patients

Beginning in March, large numbers of young children began arriving at the Dhaka Hospital for treatment of diarrhoeal diseases. Testing at the time showed that 4 in 5 of these children were infected with rotavirus – a common winter disease in Bangladesh. As the weeks passed, the high patient numbers continued, but gradually we also began to see large numbers of adults with other, more serious diarrhoeal diseases joining the ongoing rush of rotavirus cases. While we don’t definitively know all the causes of this unusual outbreak, this year, the rain we normally expect in April has not arrived and temperatures have soared in Dhaka, leaving people with little of the clean drinking water they desperately need.