A night at Dhaka Medical College Hospital: Between official claims and lived reality

There is a belief I have carried for years: at least once in a lifetime, one should spend a night in a hospital. Not because illness is desirable, but because sorrow and suffering—so deeply woven into the human condition—reveal themselves most clearly within those walls.

I learned this the hard way when I spent a night at Dhaka Medical College Hospital while a close relative underwent surgery. I was there as a witness.

Her surgery was scheduled in the gynecology ward. What I saw as she waited for the operating theater to be ready still sits painfully in my memory. On the way to the reception room, patients lay on both sides of the corridor—some on scraps of cloth, others on bare tiles. The rooms had no empty beds; and according to the nurses, this was perfectly normal.

Six hours passed before her name was finally called for surgery. She was told to wait outside the operating theater, but there wasn't a single chair in sight. With a saline needle in her hand and me holding the saline bag, she did the only thing she could: she lay down on the floor outside the OT for almost 30 minutes before her surgery.

The floor was cold, dusty, and stained. That painful image—of someone preparing for a life-altering operation while lying in a corridor—is a reality countless families endure every day.

Sanitation is the invisible emergency at DMCH. Photo: TBS

Inside the gynecology ward, I saw new mothers leaving the hospital with joy, their families beaming as they stepped out with newborns swaddled in blankets. And just steps away, I saw women who had lost their babies, sitting silently, unable to lift their heads. Their grief hung in the air—heavy and impossible to ignore.

The problems with service delivery at the hospital are layered so deeply that even the staff acknowledge them. A severe manpower shortage, a bedding crisis that forces thousands to sleep on the floor, doctors arriving late for check-ups, patients lying beside piles of garbage, and a woman vomiting just inches from someone with a freshly sealed wound are only a few examples. The nurses I spoke to said all of this was normal, too.

Built for 2,600 beds but treating 12,000 daily

Dhaka Medical College Hospital (DMCH) is officially a 2,600-bed tertiary facility, including the 300-bed burn unit. On any given day, however, there are 3,000 to 4,500 admitted patients. Add to this 4,000 to 5,000 outpatient visits and another 1,000 to 1,300 emergency cases, and the hospital ends up treating nearly 10,000 to 12,000 people daily.

Bangladesh spends around 2.8% of its GDP on healthcare, among the lowest in South Asia. Public hospitals receive less than 1% of the GDP in allocations. WHO data shows Bangladesh has only 0.8 hospital beds per 1,000 people, compared to the global average of 2.9. Overcrowding, therefore, is not a surprise—it is an inevitability.

No hospital, regardless of its infrastructure, can maintain safety or sanitation under such pressure. 

According to the hospital's information desk, DMCH never refuses a patient. They claim that medicine is provided for everyone, all tests are available 24 hours a day, and mass-casualty management is flawless.

But the gap between this official narrative and lived reality is where frustration, distrust, and anger linger. Families who come here rarely have the privilege of rest. Abdul Alim, a school teacher waiting with his brother, said, "We sleep in the corridors because we are not allowed to stay inside with them, nor can we go home. If something happens, who will come? So night after night, we sleep on the floor. I'm no beggar, but today I feel no different."

For some, exploitation compounds the humiliation. One Ansar member admitted, "If you need a bed, you either need a strong reference or powerful connections. Or you can bribe us." He added that while the treatment is good, the environment is very "terrible."

A nurse, speaking anonymously, confessed that corruption exists at every level. "The higher authorities loot everything. And we are to blame too. We run our own syndicates. We push wheelchairs for money, we take commissions from ambulances and medicines. The system forces everyone into survival mode."

Patients corroborate this. Wheelchair use often requires Tk100–Tk200 in tips. Tests sometimes demand additional payments. Medicines prescribed by doctors are frequently "out of stock" at the hospital pharmacy, yet mysteriously available in nearby private shops, sometimes with intermediaries directing patients there.

The nurse added, "Hospital pharmacy staff will claim that 'the problem is the supply chain, or we don't get the government supply, or our budget isn't enough, or if we had double the budget, maybe we could provide better service.' But all of this is false; they get enough money. They do this either to earn commissions from outside vendors or to sell the medicines themselves."

Yet families like that of 22-year-old Raheed Hasan feel the consequences. "A prescribed injection hasn't been administered because they say it's not available," Raheed's father said. "But the pharmacy lists it as stocked."

Crisis hidden in plain sight

Sanitation is the invisible emergency at DMCH. With each toilet shared by around twenty people, the director, Brigadier General Asaduzzaman Khan, acknowledged the growing complaints in a recent interview with UNB and pledged to address these ongoing issues.

The kitchen also reflects these problems. Waste lies piled near cooking areas, and rice is left uncovered. With a daily food budget of only Tk150 per patient, the director argued that it is impossible to provide quality meals and believes the budget must be increased to Tk200.

Photo: TBS

Elevators are another site of suffering. "Only two elevators work," said Akhi Akter, whose father is a stroke patient. "There's no separate elevator for patients. We waited for hours."

Bangladesh spends around 2.8% of its GDP on healthcare, among the lowest in South Asia. Public hospitals receive less than 1% of the GDP in allocations. WHO data shows Bangladesh has only 0.8 hospital beds per 1,000 people, compared to the global average of 2.9. Overcrowding, therefore, is not a surprise—it is an inevitability.

Poor treatment leads to repeated hospital visits. Insufficient sanitation increases infection rates. Patients too poor to afford timely care become long-term burdens on the system. And the inequality within public wards means those with money can access private diagnostics, while the poor wait—sometimes until it is too late.

One of the darkest realities is the syndicate system—layers of unofficial brokers, intermediaries, and staff who profit from desperation. A 2020 survey found that 72% of public hospitals in Bangladesh face regular medicine shortages. At Dhaka Medical, these shortages force families to buy from private pharmacies, fueling suspicions that syndicates divert supplies for profit.

Photo: TBS

Earlier this year, the High Court condemned these networks for playing "ducks and drakes" with people's lives by supplying expired drugs and exploiting patients.

Tabarak Bhuiya, whose wife is a patient, said, "More beds must be added. Adequate staff and doctors are needed."

Juthee Akhter, waiting with her sister, said, "So much development has happened, but Dhaka Medical hasn't changed. When you enter, it feels like there is no administration at all—only brokers."

She also pointed to a shocking fact: every year, a large portion of the health budget goes unused because the ministry either cannot spend it or does not know where to allocate it.

Standing outside the operating theater, holding my relative's saline bag as she lay on the dirty hospital floor, I thought about every person in those corridors.

The man with a neural injury whose family might discharge him early, the mother mourning her stillborn child, and the father sleeping on the floor to be close to his daughter—all of these sights scream a single line: "We do not need VIP visits. We do not need cameras. We need beds, doctors, and medicines."