Dengue admissions across the Dhaka division crossed 50,000 cases for the year on Monday, the Directorate General of Health Services confirmed, as hospitals from Mugda to Mitford reported their highest single-week intake of the season.
The latest seven-day window logged 4,127 new admissions — a 38 percent jump on the previous week — and 22 deaths, mostly among adults aged between 25 and 60. Public-health officials say the surge is being driven by the late monsoon, persistent water-logging in inner-city wards, and an Aedes aegypti population that has now expanded into traditionally low-risk neighbourhoods.
"We are seeing severe dengue presentations that we used to associate with second or third infections appearing in patients with their first known infection," said Dr. Mahbuba Khan, a senior physician at Mugda Medical College Hospital, in a phone interview. "Pleural effusion, hepatitis, plasma leakage — the picture is becoming more complex."
The DGHS has activated stand-by ICU capacity at four government hospitals in the capital and reissued its 2023 fluid-management protocol to district health officers. A senior official, who asked not to be named because they are not authorised to speak on the record, said the directorate was "watching the next ten days very closely" and had asked Dhaka's two city corporations to step up adulticide spraying in the eight wards reporting the highest case loads.
BHRF members visiting the Shaheed Suhrawardy emergency on Sunday night documented a queue of more than 60 patients waiting for triage, with several being routed to corridor beds. The hospital's superintendent confirmed that bed occupancy was at 142 percent and that an additional 30 beds had been brought in from a neighbouring ward.
The Ministry of Health is expected to brief the cabinet on the outbreak this week. Civil-society groups have urged the directorate to publish ward-level case maps in real time, arguing that residents and clinicians need a clearer picture of where transmission is intensifying.
