The intensive care unit (ICU) has 22 beds, but is having to serve 29 now. Doctors have had to set up extra beds in the unit.
Previously, every patient that experienced second septic shock was immediately be transferred from the general ward to the ICU but now, the unit is only taking patients who have experienced the second septic shock and need to be on a ventilator.
In the past three weeks, the number of admissions to the ICU has risen to three times the normal at six-seven cases per day, and doctors have been overwhelmed.
Doctors set up equipment to treat a 19-year-old woman transferred Thursday from Ba Ria – Vung Tau Province.
Five days before she was admitted Tuesday to the provincial General Hospital, the woman had high fever and muscle pain for five days.
She has been put on a ventilator and has to receive dialysis constantly, doctors said.
Doctor Nguyen Trong Duy checks the condition of a critically ill 48-year-old patient from the Central Highlands province of Lam Dong.
As of Thursday, the patient had been in the ICU for almost three weeks.
He has undergone several septic shocks apart from suffering from liver and kidney failure. His condition has worsened recently with pneumonia and respiratory failure.
A doctor and a nurse assistant rush a 28-year-old patient to the emergency room after she was transferred from Long An Province that borders HCMC Thursday.
Her husband said she developed fever of 39-40 degrees Celcius five days ago. On Thursday, her temperature dropped but she got bleeding gums and was exhausted.
The emergency ward at the Hospital for Tropical Diseases has been receiving almost 10 dengue fever patients each day recently.
The hospital has 550 beds but it has added another 200 or so to cope with the increase in the number of dengue fever patients.
According to the municipal Health Department, the city had recorded the nation's highest number of dengue fever patients this year at more than 20,950 as of Jun. 29, up 172.5 percent against the same period last year.
Of these patients, 580 are under treatment, including 278 transferred from other southern localities.
So far this year, the city had recorded 10 dengue fever deaths, seven more than the same period last year and eight more than the average recorded over the 2016-2020 period.
