Some 150,000 patients, particularly from the affluent section, go abroad for treatment every year due to lack of sophisticated healthcare facilities in the country, causing huge financial losses.
A recent study shows the patients mostly travel to India, Singapore, Thailand and Malaysia for better treatment.
State Minister for Health Mozibur Rahman Fakir said the government hospitals have comparatively better facilities but those remain fully packed with middle class and poor patients.
“We have some private-sector hospitals which provide world-class treatment but their costs are excessively high,” he told daily sun.
Hospitals like Apollo, United or Square take about Tk 600,000 to Tk 700,000 for an open-heart surgery, but the same costs only Tk 300,000 in Bangalore, India, he said.
It means a patient can save at least Tk 100,000-200,000 after meeting his or her travel as well as food costs, Mozibur noted.
However, it has become a fashion for the affluent people to go abroad to recover from even minor illnesses, the state minister added.
“I know a schoolteacher who developed primary-level breast cancer, which can easily be cured in the country, but she went to India and spent about Tk 600,000 for recovery,” he said.
Healthcare experts said although the medical equipment used in the local hospitals and clinics are almost the same compared to those of the other countries, lack of quality services encourages rich people to go abroad.
Prof Zonaid Shafiq, chairman of Japan-Bangladesh Friendship Hospital (JBFH), said although some hospitals like Square, Apollo, United, LabAid and JBFH provide better healthcare facilities, many patients go abroad for their personal satisfaction. But it is true that there are some critical tests which cannot be done in the country. So, many find no alternative but to go abroad, he added.
Talking to daily sun, Prof MA Samad, chairman of Kidney Awareness, Monitoring and Prevention Society, said many patients have no proper idea about the existing treatment facilities in the country.
They go abroad for better treatment but finally come back with frustration, he added.
Only 5 percent of the population can afford treatment costs for critical diseases while others have to go to the government hospitals. In such cases, going abroad for treatment is simply out of imagination, he said.
Prof Samad said, “The standards of healthcare in the developed countries, including the US, the UK, Singapore, Japan, Canada and the European countries are almost the same, but to some extent their technical support is better than that of us.”
In many cases, doctors advise critical patients, who have to undergo micro-surgeries, to go abroad because hospitals in the developed countries are more experiences in dealing with sensitive cases, he added.
A study, jointly conducted by Prof Md Mahboob Ali and Aneeta Medheker of Central Queensland University, shows absence of world-class healthcare lead patients to go to countries like China, Singapore, South Korea, India, Malaysia and Thailand to undergo plastic surgery, organ replacement, reproductive IVF procedures and so on.
Nearly 500,000 Bangladeshis visit India every year. Of them, 25 percent people travel for treatment purposes.
The experts said medical specialities such as high-tech medical infrastructure and doctors’ professional expertise of the developed countries attract rich patients.
Another survey, conducted among 1,250 patients, shows most local nurses, brothers and ward boys in hospitals are more powerful than doctors.
In most cases, the petty employees in different government medical college hospitals show little or no respect to doctors, let alone providing good services to the patients.
Even there are allegations of charging exorbitant fees but providing poor services against a number of private-sector hospitals in the capital.
Proper management in the healthcare sector can improve the situation through a strategic plan and its strict implementation which ultimately can make the country a hub of better healthcare.
-With Daily Sun input
