A mobile court of Rapid Action Battalion (Rab) yesterday sentenced a doctor to seven days in prison for running a hospital without licence in the capital and allowing blood transfusion without any blood tests of donors.
The mobile court assisted by a representative of the Directorate of Health also fined the arrestee, anesthetist Arif Hossain, his wife gynaecologist Jannatul Ferdousi and Eklasur Rahman, a technician of the hospital at Jatrabari, Tk 3.4 lakh in total. They had to pay the fine on the spot.
Acting on a tip-off, the Rab-1 team around 11:00am raided the Medi-Bangla General Hospital and Diagnostic Centre, a five-storey building in which four floors are used for the hospital and diagnostic centre.
Magistrate Anwar Pasha, who led the mobile court, told The Daily Star that they found the doctors taking blood from donors without the mandatory tests for five serious viruses and transferring it into patients’ bodies.
The pathological test reports done at the diagnostic centre bore the signature of a doctor but it was found that the technician had forged the signature, he added.
As for the licence for running the hospital, he said owners Arif and Ferdousi had a licence of a 10-bed hospital which expired two and a half years back, and they added extra 13 beds without the renewal of the licence.
The magistrate also said the couple has been running another hospital, DeshBangla Hospital, at Shanir Akhra without any licence for last one and a half years.
Arif Hossain defended himself by saying that some patients do not have the financial ability to pay for the blood tests, and in those cases, they [he and his wife] do not conduct the tests, the magistrate said.
