Dengue pays a visit

Dengue virus treatment at Bahawalpur VIctoria Hospital

The news was not good. My niece is a student nurse in Karachi starting her fourth year of training and she had caught dengue. The even worse news was that this was in all likelihood a self-inflicted wound as there were uncovered water containers in the bathroom of the hostel where she lived. And what do the mosquitoes that carry the dengue virus like? Why nothing better than uncovered buckets of water in a hostel full of student nurses. Niece was admitted to the government hospital where she is in training and family discussion ensued. Do we leave her there or bring her up to Bahawalpur? It is a fourteen-hour train journey. Sick woman. In the end, she decided — Bahawalpur. Rescue party dispatched and she arrived looking not good at all early last Sunday morning. As it turns out — good call.

By lunchtime Sunday she was clearly worse and she was taken to Bahawalpur Victoria Hospital at which point things took a distinct turn for the better. Reams are written, and rightly so, about the innumerable deficiencies in public healthcare in Pakistan. I have written some of those reams and will doubtless write more in the future but that is not why a call your attention today.

The family rolled up to the emergency admissions entrance and niece was swiftly seen and given an on-the-spot diagnosis of yup, that looks like dengue to us and we are admitting you to the Dengue Unit. Hmmm…Dengue Unit? I had decided to remain at home in part because I was curious to see what reception the family and my poor niece would get. Not rich, minority members, just ordinary folks turning up with a sick young woman much like the other 3-4,000 people that present themselves at BVH every day.

So it was that she was admitted to the four-bedded Dengue Unit that was established in 2014, has had 632 admissions since and never lost a patient according to Dr Amir Bukhari, a track record of eyebrow-raising proportions.

Tuesday saw my good self, paying a visit. The entrance hall of the emergency area at BVH is not unlike a scene of catastrophe of almost biblical proportions, complete with the newly dead being threaded through the milling crowds. Families lay on the floor, bandaged limbs stuck out, moans and cries filled the air. All pretty much as expected and previously experienced. This is a hospital under appalling pressure and it showed. Some, possibly many, of these people were being failed by the system but my niece was not one of them.

It was spotlessly clean, state-of-the-art equipped, the medical notes — yes, I looked closely — were bang up to date and legible and the unit was being run by a nurse on attachment from another Punjab hospital. The BVH has a primary teaching function serving the whole of the south of the province and is not a ‘general’ hospital, having I think only 119 beds.

Niece was hooked up to lines but at least able to give a small smile and a squeeze of the hand and I was off to see Dr Bukhari. Thanked the mildly amazed looking nurse who is going to be getting a bunch of flowers from me by way of appreciation, and sat down with a man who has what must be one of the worst jobs in the world. The trenches on the front lines of primary healthcare are under constant siege day and night. It never slacks off. Scarce resources have to be allocated, triage decisions made, tired doctors and nurses squeezed to go the extra mile. I commended the service my family had received but as he pointed out this was nothing exceptional, they got what everybody gets and that is why you are getting 700 words on why things are not always as black as they are painted.

My niece — who hopes to work at BVH when she qualifies — got what everybody gets. This was routine. Unexceptional — yet exceptional to have a 100 per cent record that nobody outside the hospital would have ever been aware of but for this piece. Thanks BVH. You can have a gold star for that. Tootle-pip!

Published in The Express Tribune, June 7^th, 2018.

Like Opinion & Editorial on Facebook, follow @ETOpEd on Twitter to receive all updates on all our daily pieces.