A 10-year-old girl died at Rajshahi Medical College Hospital after her family failed to secure an intensive care bed, only for the hospital’s ICU to call her father three days later to say a bed had become available.

Fatima Khatun had shown measles symptoms for 15 days. Her family treated her locally before her condition worsened. They admitted her to the hospital on the morning of March 30. Doctors recommended an ICU bed, but the family spent the day searching without success. She died at about 5 pm that day.

On April 2, the hospital’s ICU called her father.

“My child died at 5 pm on March 30 because she couldn’t get ICU care,” Arun Ali, the father who is a rickshaw puller, told reporters. “Three days later, the hospital called to say a bed was free. I begged doctors and nurses to save her, but we couldn’t find a bed. Now the call comes three days after she left us.”

Fatima was the only child of Arun Ali and Sonia Khatun from Rupnagar village in Shibganj sub-district, Chapainawabganj.

Her mother, Sonia Begum, said: “They contacted us three days after my daughter died. But my daughter is no longer with us. Who will I put in the ICU?”

The hospital’s spokesperson and emergency department chief, Dr Shankar K Biswas, confirmed the sequence of events. “This is very sad,” he told Bonik Barta. “The same thing happens with adult patients. There’s no provision to free a bed for another patient until the existing patient recovers, becomes stable or passes away.”

He said the paediatric ICU has 18 beds, up from 12 previously. “Against this limited number, 50 or more child patients are waiting. Some go to private hospitals or home without a bed. Others remain waiting at the hospital. When a patient dies without taking a discharge, we don’t get the clearance. That’s why the call goes to that person’s family to inform them a bed is free.”