Despite efforts to lift Bangladesh from the status of developing nations, the country refuses to make any progress in its healthcare sector. Everyday, emergency patients in Dhaka Medical College Hospital (DMCH) are facing harassment, due to mismanagement, poor doctor-patient ratio, and unavailability of beds.
A visit to the hospital would inevitably show patients undergoing treatment on the floor. These patients have to buy or bring their beds from home.
Aynal Islam, a patient from Rajshahi, was admitted to the hospital last week. Joinab Begum, his wife, told The Independent on Sunday, “We came here five days back. However, we couldn’t manage a bed for my husband. So, he was placed on a mat, on the floor in front of the ward.”
Also, patients and their relatives complained that some ward-boys and DMCH employees take money from patients, in exchange for beds and other facilities. “If you have money, you’ll get a bed here,” rued Joinab.
Ward-22 and its corridor was found packed with patients, while their attendants kept their eyes on beds and mats on the floor.
A senior official of the hospital said, “Private hospitals can admit patients after counting their beds, but public hospitals, especially DMCH, can’t afford such luxury. If we admit patients on the basis of number of beds, we can accommodate only 2,000 of them. But, we usually treat more than 2,800 indoor patients everyday.”
Brig.-Gen. Md Shahidul Hoque Mallik, director of DMCH, told The Independent that the hospital never refuses to admit any patient to the indoor department. Apart from patients from Dhaka city, the hospital provides medical treatment to patients from all corners of the country and referred patients from different public and private hospitals, he added.
“It amounts to tremendous pressure on existing personnel, logistics, medical equipment, and beds. Hopefully, after extending the DMCH building, we’ll be able to provide more care to our patients,” he added.
“In absence of adequate beds, manpower, equipment and other facilities, it’s not possible to provide quality treatment to patients,” admitted the director.
This correspondent visited six wards on the first and the second floors of the country’s largest, 1,700-bed hospital, and found most patients lying on mats, inside the wards.
“We have installed closed-circuit television (CCTV) at all important points, to crack down on middlemen taking patients to private clinics or diagnostic centres,” said Mallik.
The move will come into effect within a week, and is expected to put an end to the rule of pimps and mismanagement, and ensure proper treatment, as well as, quality food.
Authorities have installed CCTV in emergency department, blood bank, pathology department, operation theatre kitchen and some other places, to monitor the movement of doctors, nurses, employees, patients, medical representatives, and pimps.
The director said that more than 600 patients visit the outdoor department of DMCH, and at least 400 patients are admitted to the indoor department, each day.
The director told The Independent that allegations of medical representatives romping around the indoor department, hampering treatment, have been raised, and such persons would only be allowed to enter the hospital on Mondays and Thursdays, from 12 noon.
-With The Independent input
