Anwar Ali, Rajshahi

The cries could be heard even from outside the gate of ward-15 of Covid-19 unit at Rajshahi Medical College Hospital on Sunday.

It was 1:45pm, and none seemed perturbed by the ceaseless sound.

“Probably someone died. Death has become a normal occurrence here…,” said a patient’s attendant.

He was right.

At the other corner of the ward’s balcony, sitting beside her mother, Shampa Akter was wailing.

The tenth grader was repeatedly pushing her mother’s body, lying still on a hospital bed with an oxygen mask on her face. At times, Shampa was carefully touching her face in an attempt to get a response.

But her mother Rawshan Ara (38) lay motionless.

Slowly, the harsh realisation that she is longer with them sank in.

Beside Shampa, her father Shahidul Islam was standing with his eyes full of tears. “She passed away moments ago. I couldn’t save her,” said Shahidul of Raninagar upazila of Naogaon.

Rawshan, a Covid-19 patient, was asymptomatic until Saturday when she started having breathing congestion at her home.

She was taken to Atrai health complex that night and given support of cylinder-supplied oxygen there, Shahidul said.

Her condition did not improve in three hours. Doctors advised the family to take her to RMCH for better treatment as the cylinder-supplied oxygen at the health complex was not sufficient for her, Shahidul said quoting the doctors.

He took her to RMCH around 4am on Sunday when her oxygen saturation level went down to 70 percent.

But the ward where Rawshan was admitted had no high flow nasal cannula (HFNC) in place for supporting critical patients. There was only the hospital’s central oxygen supply line and some oxygen concentrators, said the ward’s staff members.

“We came for better treatment, but here too my wife received similar treatment,” said Shahidul.

Like Rawshan, at least 40 percent of Covid-19 patients have been coming to RMCH in critical condition with their oxygen saturation level around 65 percent, said doctors and staffers.

Their only hope for survival is if they are given immediate support of high pressure oxygen using ventilators that are capable of providing 100 percent oxygen per minute or the HFNC that supports 75 percent oxygen per minute, they said.

But most of these patients were being treated with the hospital’s central oxygen lines, oxygen cylinders and concentrators that are capable of providing not above 15 percent oxygen per minute.

As a result, most of the deaths are occurring at the RMCH Covid unit, according to senior doctors and officials of the hospital.

The hospital data shows that 18 patients died at the Covid unit in 24 hours till Monday morning, raising the death toll to 82 in the first five days of July.