A Bangladesh hospital’s cardiology unit that functioned in collaboration with an Indian healthcare group has been shut since March because the doctors, nurses and paramedics from Calcutta who ran it returned home following the Covid-19 outbreak and are now unable to report back.

Some 160 heart patients who were scheduled to undergo surgery or other procedures at the Imperial Hospital in Chittagong have been calling desperately to find out when the unit would resume functioning, hospital authorities said.

The news is that the medical team from Calcutta is ready to go back but cannot because flights, trains and road transport have stopped between Calcutta and Dhaka.

It was around the Durga Puja season last year that the 350-bed Imperial Hospital had tied up with the Narayana Health group to set up the cardiology unit, hospital officials said. The 65-bed unit began functioning from February 16 this year.

Some 25 healthcare personnel joined Imperial’s cardiology section from Narayana Health’s Calcutta unit, of which the R.N. Tagore International Institute of Cardiac Sciences is the flagship hospital.

The team included cardiac surgeons, interventional cardiologists, critical-care experts, nurses trained in critical cardiac care, and paramedics. The Chittagong hospital provided another 25-odd personnel, mostly junior doctors and support staff.

“The doctors saw 1,972 patients and selected 160 for cardiac bypass surgeries, stent implants and other surgeries and procedures,” Imperial Hospital chairman Rabiul Husain told The Telegraph from Chittagong.

“But in the last week of March (before the surgeries and procedures could start), the team members left for India as Covid-19 had begun to spread.”

Husain added: “We were all unsure about the situation at the time, and we too thought it would be best for them to return to their families for the time being. So we facilitated their return.”

He said everyone had thought that the team would be able to come back within a couple of months.

Husain said: “Now patients are calling us desperately to know when the doctors would be available again.”

He said the callers included many patients who had undergone procedures and surgeries at Narayana Health’s Bangalore hospital and were waiting for follow-up treatment at Imperial.

In the pre-Covid days, Husain said, many patients from Bangladesh went to Indian cities such as Bangalore, Chennai and Calcutta for treatment. With that option closed now, these patients are stuck.

In Calcutta, Narayana Health authorities acknowledged that Imperial was asking them to send the doctors back.

“We are receiving calls and mails. The doctors and other members of the team are ready to go but it’s not possible (for lack of transport),” said R. Venkatesh, regional director, eastern India, Narayana Health.

“We are speaking to the Indian and Bangladeshi authorities about this, but as of now nothing is happening and we have to wait.”

Flights between Calcutta and Dhaka have been stalled since the pandemic broke out, with the exception of a few Vande Bharat flights in May.

Sources said that although these flights were meant to bring back stranded expats, the medical personnel would have been allowed to travel to Bangladesh on them but they had at the time been unwilling.

The Bengal government later stopped evacuation flights from international destinations after many of the returning passengers went home from the airport instead of going to quarantine centres, as required.

Bengal has, however, allowed international flights to resume from September under the air transport bubble programme — an arrangement between two countries to operate a specific number of commercial flights — provided all the passengers have medical certificates declaring them Covid-negative.

“We are expecting flights under the air transport bubble programme to start soon between India and Bangladesh,” a civil aviation ministry official said.

A Bangladesh deputy high commission official in Calcutta, however, said there was no clarity when visas would be issued again or passenger transport between the two countries would resume.