Dengue surge poses admission problems to hospitals [July 10 2016]

by Carol Aloysius

At least three hospitals in the highly congested Colombo district have said they had seen an unexpected rise in the number of suspected dengue cases visiting their OPD's and being admitted to their in - patient wards.

Director, Kalubowila Hospital Dr Asela Gunawardane said the hospital which only has a bed strength of 1100 and three medical units was currently facing a serious problem of overcrowding. " Two thirds of our patients share one bed while others have only plastic chairs to rest. He said the large number of patients had also led to infection within the wards forcing the hospital to carry out fumigation operations within and outside."

"Because of this we decided to open a Special Dengue Unit in the Millennium building which has been idling. Work on preparing the ground structure is in progress. It should be opened in three weeks", he said. Currently the hospital has 3,000 patients and a thousand are admitted every day. "The majority are dengue patients. Staff and our two ICU units for emergency patients is inadequate," he said.

The Negombo Base Hospital director, Dr Lakshman Fernando said from last week the number of dengue patients being admitted had exceeded over 200 daily. "We have only 17 beds and limited staff. Managing these patients is a challenge . We are coping as best as we can," he said.

Ragama General Hospital Director, Dr Roy Perera said very high admissions had been reported in every single ward in the hospital. "We have 1,470 beds. Upto now our wards are not overcrowded and each patient has a bed. But we can't predict what will happen if there is an outbreak of the disease," he said..

The Gampaha District General Hospital when contacted also said there was a significant increase in the number of admissions." From our records, this is the month we see most admissions for every disease including dengue", the spokesman said. He said there were no special wards for dengue patients and they were admitted to all four medical wards. One of the wards when contacted said out of 48 beds which were all full, over 20 were dengue patients. " We have enough equipment and so far there is no problem with beds. But we need more staff. However, each ward has a medical officer day and night," he said.