Paediatric COVID-19: Review of Hospital Experiences and Impact on Child Health Services in Bangladesh

Abstract

Previous studies suggested that COVID-19 is more likely to infect older adults, particularly those with chronic comorbidities. However in Bangladesh, paediatric patients are on the rise. Three percent of children less than 10 years were identified as having COVID-19 infection. Though over 90% of the cases were mild or moderate in nature but many of them required hospital admission. So it appeared that local situation in Bangladesh seems to be different. This study was carried out to find out hospital experiences and impact of COVID-19 in child health in Bangladesh. Data were collected from three tertiary care hospitals of Bangladesh dealing majority of COVID-19 infected children. The hospitals were Dhaka Shishu (Children) Hospital, Dhaka Medical College Hospital and Mugda Medical College Hospital. As COVID-19 outbreak also adversely affecting different services among the children of Bangladesh, review was done to evaluate essential health delivery services especially routine immunization. Total 422 children were included from three tertiary care hospitals. They were predominantly male. Children of all age groups were infected. Significant numbers of children were admitted with moderate to severe illness (moderate 42.89%, severe 35.78% and critical 16.11%) with some casualties (mortality 4.27%). Routine immunization has already been hampered and threatened a significant increase in child mortality due to Vaccine Preventable Disease (VPD) in coming days. Paediatric patients were on the rise and unfortunately we noticed large number of hospital admission and some casualties already. Essential health care services should be preserved to prevent avoidable losses of child lives during the COVID-19 pandemic and to protect progress in reducing child mortality achieved over recent years.