The diarrhoea situation in Dhaka and nearby areas may remain unchanged for the next three weeks as the daily number of patients has remained stagnant around 1200-mark for the past week till Sunday, said Dr Baharul Alam, head of the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh (icddr,b) today (April 4, 2022).

"Considering the trend in the years before the Covid-19 pandemic, we can say that this plateau may continue for three-four weeks," said Baharul, who supervises the icddr,b unit that treats the majority of diarrhoea patients every year.

Starting from the second week of March, the current outbreak of diarrheal disease has entered into the fourth week, and the number of daily patients is neither rising nor declining significantly.

According to the icddr,b official, the country witnesses diarrheal outbreak twice a year. One is during summer when adults constitute the majority of the patients, and another is during the winter when children become the worst affected.

This summer, the outbreak began a bit earlier and the number of patients is higher than before, experts said.

According to the icddr,b data, the daily diarrhoea patient admission mark exceeded the 1,000 mark on March 16 for the first time in 60 years of icddr,b. The hospital had admitted 1,057 patients that day.

On March 28, it rose to 1,334 patients, the highest ever, but started declining slowly.

In 24 hours till 12:00 am today, as many as 1,171 or around 49 diarrhoea patients per hour were admitted to the icddr,b hospital. This was below the 1200-mark since March 26.

In 17 hours preceding 5:00 pm today, however, as many as 942 patients per hour were admitted, meaning around 55 patients were admitted per hour.

"We have been receiving several brought dead diarrhoea patients almost every day. But there is no casualty after hospital admission here," Baharul also said, without mentioning the total death count this year.

Meanwhile, our Barishal correspondent reports that the number of diarrhoea patients has been rising steeply in the division, with 319 patients admitted to the hospitals in 24 hours till 8:00 am today.

"The situation is not so serious, but unstable. We have alerted our health staffers… We have enough stock of saline, including 1.73 lakh cholera saline," Humayun Shaheen Khan, director of the health directorate at Barisal Division told The Daily Star today.

Meanwhile, 34 diarrhoea patients were admitted to hospitals in Chapainawabganj district in the same period, reports our correspondent quoting Dr SM Mahmudur Rashid, civil surgeon of the district.

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Daily diarrhoea cases: Admission crosses 1k at icddr,b