Bangladesh – COVID19 Asia

As of July 14th, Bangladesh has registered about 190,057 COVID-19 cases and 2,424 deaths. Medical experts say that the real numbers are likely higher because of the lack of testing going on. Though there are roughly 3,000 new cases accumulating each day, hospitals have many empty beds, as citizens are scared to enter hospitals.

In the capital Dhaka, roughly 4,800 of the 6,300 beds set aside for COVID patients are not being used, and there are only 100 patients in a new 2,000-bed field hospital built for the pandemic. In Chittagong, authorities say only half of its dedicated beds are currently filled. According to the health department, the beds aren’t being used because many people are being treated at home. “Most of the patients have mild symptoms. Adequate telemedicine services are available. That may be the reason for empty beds in hospitals,” Nasima Sultana, health department deputy head asserted.

An official for a medical charity has told of the patients hesitations, stating that many have said they’d “rather die at home than die in a hospital.” A survey of 80,000 people carried out with the UN found that 44% of Bangladeshis were “too scared” to even use the government’s COVID helpline. The fear stems from the country’s hospitals not being “patient-friendly.” Rashid e Mahbub, head of the Bangladesh Health Rights Movement spoke on the issue further, “A negative perception have been treated, and that is promoting many patients to stay at home. Few people can afford the expensive private hospitals. […] A significant number of COVID-19 patients are dying at home.”

“We heard the doctors and nurses don’t come near patients for fear of being infected,” an anonymous woman stated. The hospitals had poor reputations before the pandemic, and thousands of wealthier citizens went to Thailand or Singapore for check-ups instead. With borders closed, they are unable to do that. Patients die at home without being followed up by doctors from the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS).

Virologist Nazrul Islam said that the questionable patient management system of the DGHS was resulting in the at-home deaths and the patients staying at home were not being followed up with and not declared recovered on confirmatory tests. He believes that the flawed management will prolong the stay of the virus.

Author: Camryn Thomas

Slum dwellers stand in marked circles as they queue to receive relief material during a government-imposed nationwide lockdown as a preventive measure against the COVID-19 coronavirus, in Kolkata on April 30, 2020. (Photo by Dibyangshu SARKAR / AFP) (Photo by DIBYANGSHU SARKAR/AFP via Getty Images) — Residents in Kolkata, India, line up to receive relief packages on April 30.

As reported recently in Foreign Policy magazine, the countries making up South Asia account for 25 percent of the world’s population, yet only 2 percent of the total confirmed coronavirus infections. Months after the first recorded case in the region, South Asia has only roughly 60,000 confirmed cases. The US has over a million confirmed cases, while Spain and Italy each are hovering just under a quarter-million.

From the article:

Parsing the numbers. South Asia’s relatively low case numbers are a bit of a puzzle, especially given high population density and poor health care systems across the region. An immediate reaction is to call into question its testing capacity. India has so far conducted only 830,201 tests, or 614 for every 1 million people—among the lowest rates of testing in the world. But if India’s low rate of testing were hiding a massive outbreak, it would show up in other ways. Only 4 percent of India’s coronavirus tests have returned positive, compared with around 17 percent in the United States, implying that the virus is less widespread in India.

Another indicator of a larger outbreak would be the number of deaths. But here the data also shows South Asia in a favorable light. While the United States has recorded more than 60,000 deaths from COVID-19, India counts only 1,079 so far. Those numbers are likely higher—only one-fifth of deaths in India tend to be medically certified—but it is not as if there has been a massive surge in hospital admissions.

Using India’s data as a proxy for the region, the likely takeaway would be that South Asian countries have either succeeded in flattening their curves for now or that they are still in the early stages of their outbreaks. If it’s the latter, then the current state of lockdown ensures the coronavirus won’t spread too rapidly.

What are South Asian countries doing right? What should Western countries learn from them in order to stop the spread of the pandemic?

Tag: Bangladesh

Bangladesh’s citizens struggle with getting medical care for COVID

South-Asian Countries Have a Lower Coronavirus Case-Count