Professor Dr. Muhammad Rafiqul Islam

Prof. Dr. Mohammad Rafiqul Islam deals with lungs. Up in Dhaka. MBBS from DMC and an MD in chest medicine. Dhaka air is basically just dust and exhaust fumes now. Lots of construction sand blowing around. The waiting room outside his door is probably loud. Just a dozen people coughing at the same time. He sits inside looking at chest X-rays. Holding the large black films up to the ceiling light. Just checking for white cloudy patches. He sees a lot of asthma. Older guys with COPD from smoking too many cheap cigarettes. He just asks them how many years they have been smoking. Writes the number down on the file. Tells them to stop. They probably will not.

He prescribes a lot of inhalers. Blue ones for emergencies. Purple ones for every day. He has to show them how to use the plastic spacers. People always breathe in too fast. He just tells them to slow down. Take a deep breath. Hold it. He is a professor so he has medical students watching him. He shows them how to listen to a wheezing chest. Sounds sort of like a broken whistle through the stethoscope. He checks the spirometry reports. Just numbers showing how much air a patient can blow into a tube. He adjusts the steroid dose. Writes it on the pad. Puts the cap back on his pen. Calls the next name.