Khadija has been staying in the Medicine Ward at Dhaka Medical College Hospital for two weeks with her nine-year-old child due to her husband’s illness.
In recent days, alongside mounting worries over his treatment, she has faced a new source of anxiety: the hospital’s meal schedule. Previously, dinner arrived by 7 pm. Now, it frequently fails to appear before 10 pm.
Pinky Akhtar, who has been at the hospital with her father for three months, shared a similar experience, “Sometimes the food is not even properly cooked. I heard the hospital is facing a gas crisis, which is causing these cooking delays.”
The gas shortage has become a primary driver of hardship for thousands of patients and their accompanying relatives at the country’s largest tertiary and referral hospital. Hospital staff report that the situation has escalated dramatically, as pipeline gas is virtually non-existent during peak cooking hours. Although a limited supply flows between midnight and 5 am, the pressure drops completely thereafter.
Hospital kitchens typically begin breakfast preparations between 5 am and 6 am, whilst evening meal preparation starts between 5 pm and 6 pm. Gas is unavailable during both windows.
To keep the kitchens operational, approximately 50 per cent of the hospital’s stoves have been converted to run on bottled LPG cylinders, Dhaka Medical College Hospital Director Brigadier General Md Asaduzzaman told TIMES of Bangladesh. However, this temporary workaround is placing a heavy strain on municipal budgets.
“We are spending between Tk40,000 and Tk45,000 daily on gas cylinders to feed between 4,000 and 4,200 patients. For now, this expense is being absorbed by the hospital budget, but relying on cylinders over an extended period is creating severe financial strain,” he explained.
Bellal Hossain Patwary, a steward at the hospital, said, “Although some gas is available from midnight to 5 am, the supply cuts off afterwards. Consequently, we have to boil rice and prepare staples within that narrow window. Kitchen staff often have to report for work at 2 am and cook through until 3 am.” He noted that the crisis has persisted for nearly two months.
Kitchen staff explained that because bottled gas must be rationed, meals have to be prepared in sequential batches rather than all at once. The hospital’s 24 commercial stoves cannot all be run simultaneously on cylinder gas. As a result, volume that would normally be cooked in a single batch must now be split into multiple rounds, significantly increasing preparation times and physical fatigue for the staff.
Cook Abul Hossain Patwari said that the entire catering operation is now reliant on alternative fuel due to the main supply failure, directly disrupting patient meal times. Under normal conditions, dinner is served to patients between 6 pm and 7 pm, around the time of Maghrib prayers. Due to the shortage, distribution is routinely delayed by several hours – sometimes stretching until 10 pm or 11 pm.
Hospital management confirmed they have formally written to Titas Gas Transmission and Distribution Company requesting the restoration of normal line pressure, but have yet to receive a satisfactory response. The crisis has also triggered administrative hurdles. Management is struggling to secure official approval for bottled gas purchases while maintaining an active mains connection.
Brigadier General Asaduzzaman noted, “If we log expenditure for bottled gas while holding an active state gas connection, it risks triggering audit objections. We have written to the ministry requesting formal authorisation to purchase cylinder gas for catering, but approval remains pending.”
The ongoing shortage has forced a shift in shift patterns as well. Night-shift employees now arrive at 2 am to cook until morning, whilst afternoon staff are routinely working from 10 am until midnight.
