The Mugda Medical College and Hospital, where Payel is being taken care of by her two sisters and mother, is the main battleground against the recent dengue outbreak in the Bangladesh capital after the viral fever took a record 1,030 lives and sent more than 210,000 people to hospitals this year.

The 10-floor hospital has a capacity of 400 beds, but the record outbreak of dengue cases means the state-run clinic is treating nearly 1,000 patients in its wards and thousands more out-patients.

Patients and their relatives had to lay out mats and lie on the floors. Visitors crowd anxiously outside the intensive care unit where patients who suffered dengue shock syndrome, the cause of death from the fever, are treated.