After she contracts coronavirus, doctor says Impulse Hospital evading responsibility

A doctor at Impulse Hospital in Dhaka’s Tejgaon has alleged the private facility is dodging its responsibilities after she contracted the coronavirus while treating patients there.

She says the authorities did not heed to her request to transfer a patient with COVID-19 symptoms.

The physician, who was working as the acting registrar at the hospital’s gynaecology department, said the hospital also “falsely” claimed she contracted the virus from her husband, a civil servant.

She was undergoing treatment at the isolation ward of a government hospital while her husband tested negative for the coronavirus, she told bdnews24.com over phone on Tuesday.

“I had asked the hospital authorities to take steps after seeing COVID-19 symptoms in a patient of our department. The patient also wanted to leave, but the authorities did not discharge her. We had to continue work in that situation,” she said.

After finishing her duty on Apr 8, she was scheduled to return to the hospital on Apr 10 but had fever and cough, she said.

The authorities did not help when some of the 12 doctors and five nurses of the department underwent COVID-19 tests themselves, she said. The result of the

test on her sample came back positive on Apr 12, the doctor said.

Later, the Impulse Hospital on its Facebook page claimed she was infected by her husband. “But he himself has tested negative,” she said.

“She is in home quarantine. What can we do? Many of our doctors are communicating with her,” said the hospital’s Chief Operating Officer Khadiza Juma.

Asked about the allegation of “lying” about the source of the doctor’s infection, Khadiza said no COVID-19 patient came to the hospital. “Then how does she say that she was infected in the hospital?” the official asked.