Onlookers give away as an injured of the Rana Plaza collapse is rushed into Enam Medical College Hospital in Savar yesterday.
It is an eerie syncopation of pain and grief, frantic effort and desperation at the Enam Medical College and Hospital.
“Bandage.”
“Forceps.”
“Quick. Where is pethidine?”
“Put the drip on. Full”
“My brother! O my brother. Where are you? Why did you go to work today?”
“Help me. I am dying. Help!”
Frantic words fly around the emergency room of Enam Hospital at Savar as victims are brought in streams. The high-pitched sirens of the ambulances just add a hellish edge to the scene.
Several hundred doctors and interns in white aprons swarm around the injured. Many of them just lie motionless with life drained out of them.
As the emergency rooms fill up, treatment is administered on the lobby. Everywhere.
The hospital, the largest in the area, has put in its every strength to cope with the situation. And yet it is proving a tough fight.
“We have called in our students and interns. All together we are 300 people taking care of the wounded,” says Moinuddin Ahmed, chief of interventional cardiology of Enam Hospital.
Locals and students of the medical college have donated blood. Till late night, people were still queuing up to donate blood.
Some pharmaceutical companies including Orion have supplied emergency medicines and antibiotics to help the hospital cope with the situation.
The operation theatre is running round the clock.
But the hospital is now beyond its capacity to handle any more patients. It has already sent a message to the rescuers on the site not to send any more patients.
“We are not taking money for our service. But our boys and girls are all exhausted. And we cannot provide beds to patients,” Moinuddin said.
On its car parking, the dead have been laid out and covered with white sheets of cloth.
Other hospitals and clinics in the locality are also overflowed with patients with minor injuries. Each hospital has posted a list of patients it is treating so that survivors’ relatives can locate them.
Source: The Daily Star