ABSTRACT
There is growing concern with the management of patients with type 2 diabetes (T2DM) across countries with suboptimal management increasing morbidity, mortality, and costs. In Bangladesh, the number of patients with diabetes will increase to an estimated 22.3 million by 2045, mainly T2DM, unless addressed. Alongside this, continued concerns with high rates of uncontrolled blood glucose levels as well as complication rates, including both microvascular and macrovascular complications in patients with T2DM in Bangladesh. This adds to the cost of care, which can be a concern among patients in Bangladesh with high co-payment rates. Alongside this, concerns with the impact of COVID-19 and associated lockdown measures on the care of these patients. Greater proactivity in managing these patients can help. Consequently, a need to ascertain what data is routinely collected in public hospitals in Bangladesh, including during the pandemic, to guide care. A pilot study was undertaken among eight patients in Chittagong Medical College using purposely designed case report forms to ascertain the extent of clinical information collected and their care against agreed target levels. There was typically poor control of blood glucose levels among the eight patients, which has resulted in increased prescribing of insulin. However, better control of blood pressure, lipids and urinary albumin levels. There were appreciable missing knowledge gaps, especially during the pandemic. This needs addressing. FUNDING There was no funding for this study or the write up of the study. © 2022. Farhana Akter et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
ABSTRACT
Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) rapidly became a global pandemic. This study aimed to investigate severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) -associated epidemiology and clinical outcomes in Bangladesh in order to understand the future course of the COVID-19 pandemic and develop approaches to prevention. A cross-sectional study based on retrospective interviews was conducted on 1021 individuals with RT-PCR-confirmed COVID-19 admitted in six different hospitals in Bangladesh and who recovered 4 weeks before the interview date. Of the 1021 patients, 111 (10.9%) were asymptomatic and the other 910 (89.1%) were symptomatic. Higher prevalence of COVID-19 was found in the male population (75%), in cohorts with B-positive blood group (36.3%) and in the 31-40 years age group. Common symptoms observed in our study participants were fever (72.4%), cough (55.9%), loss of taste (40.7%) and body ache (40%); whereas among the biochemical parameters, neutrophil count (46.4%), D-dimer (46.1%) and ferritin (37.9%) levels were elevated. Among the recovered individuals, short-term outcomes including pains and aches (31.8%), weakened attention span (24.4%) and anxiety or depression (23.1%) were also significantly prevalent in the symptomatic cases with comorbidities. Our study showed that in Bangladesh, adult males aged between 31 and 40 years were more vulnerable to developing COVID-19. It also indicated a rising trend of asymptomatic cases as the pandemic progressed. As a consequence, deployment of interventions to curb further spread of community infection is necessary to avoid grave outcomes of COVID-19 in Bangladesh.