Dr. Gopal, a faculty member at College of Nursing, stands in front of the new Free Friday Clinic that he has opened in cooperation with a welfare association in the IUBAT neighbourhood. This clinic is open to anyone who is in need on Friday mornings. It is staffed by Dr. Gopal and several other physician volunteers. IUBAT nursing students will also be assisting Dr. Gopal in this humanitarian endeavour, starting in 2014.
Many may already know that Bangladesh is a densely populated country, one of the most densely populated in the world. If not, imagine a country that houses approximately half the population of the United States, but only occupying a space 1.5% of the size, and that should give a better sense of how crowded conditions are in Bangladesh.
For a more visual depiction of the density of this country, watch this video of rush hour traffic conditions: http://safeshare.tv/w/vwncRciSFb
After the factory collapse disaster in April 2013, Bangladesh has been in the international spotlight, primarily with regard to labour and working conditions. However, due to the large need for medical attention post-disaster, the media also wrote about hospital conditions and the care that victims were receiving.
An article from CNN chronicles the experience of a nurse from the United States, sent to Bangladesh’s Dhaka Medical as part of her regular rotation at Massachusetts General Hospital. She describes her reaction after her first day:
“She’d never been in a hospital so ill-equipped to treat severe cases. In Boston, she changed her latex gloves after seeing each patient. In Dhaka, the hospital could not afford so many gloves, so the nurses used one pair on several patients.
She was appalled by the workload of the nurses; each averaged 25 to 30 patients. In America, that number would likely be somewhere between four and eight.”
For the full article, please visit CNN’s website.
