Calcutta: Medical colleges in Calcutta are teeming with patients battling unexplained fever and dengue, which at last count had affected 20,000 people in Bengal. The state government stopped updating the count last week.

Metro visited the outpatient department of Calcutta Medical College and Hospital and the general medicine ward of NRS Medical College and Hospital on Thursday to find both places packed with patients who had been "referred" by hospitals in the districts. Some had come directly, saying they had little faith in the quality of treatment in public health centres and even district hospitals.

Lack of trust

Abdul Hamid Naiya of Satgharia in South 24-Parganas, 70km from Calcutta, said he knew of villagers with fever visiting the Matherdighi Rural Hospital and returning with a strip of paracetamol but no blood test report.

"When I came down with fever two days ago, I went to the block hospital in Canning II. I had a blood test done there that confirmed I had dengue. I came directly to Calcutta Medical College and Hospital for treatment," Naiya said.

Lack of confidence

Doctors at referral hospitals in Calcutta have long accused their colleagues in the districts of shirking responsibility by sending patients who can be treated there. The reasons for "referred" becoming the preferred word to write on a prescription range from lack of confidence to the pressure of handling hundreds of patients every day in health centres bereft of proper infrastructure.

A section of doctors said the unpredictable behaviour of the dengue serotype active this year was also a factor. The blood platelet count of many dengue patients have plummeted overnight, making doctors in the districts wary of taking the risk of treating them in poorly equipped hospitals.

"If I assure a patient that he or she can be treated here and complications crop up the next day, the family could turn against me.... What if transfusion is required and platelets are not available?" a medicine specialist at the Chandernagore Sub-divisional Hospital told Metro over phone.

Long queues

A teenage girl weak with fever queued up at Calcutta Medical College for more than two hours on Thursday to see a doctor. Gulshana Khatoon, 15, had come from the Sunderbans. Her wait was made longer by someone who misdirected her to a queue for children aged 12 and below.

At NRS, 64 trolley beds jostled for space with regular ones in the male and female medicine wards. There are 203 beds there, but 365 patients were admitted on Thursday itself.