The Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University authorities are pondering on setting up a music therapy centre, a proposal they have recently received from a music teacher.
The university’s vice-chancellor Pran Gopal Datta said they were giving it a serious thought but lacked funding for the job.
‘We haven’t made any decision yet though we are serious about the proposal. Besides, we don’t have any funds for such a centre,’ he told New Age.
M Mahamudul Hasan, teaching violin at the Bulbul Academy of Fine Arts in the capital, submitted his proposal to the university on April 10.
BSMMU urology professor Abdus Salam who received the proposal termed music therapy as an auxiliary treatment method.
‘It is a kind of adjunctive method for treating patients that physicians in many countries apply, besides their conventional treatment procedures,’ he said.
It can be more applicable to terminally ill patients for many of whom pain management is vital.
‘Music can be fruitfully used as part of palliative care of these patients suffering from severe pain,’ said the professor.
It can also be used as a complementary procedure in treating people with mental retardation and mental illnesses.
‘You can apply it treating autistic children,’ Salam said, adding music therapy might help their rehabilitation processes, too.
Mahamudul Hasan talked about the use of the therapy in many countries, India among them, in treating many conditions.
‘It is widely used, for example, in treating high blood pressure and neck pain and headache caused by it,’ he said and mentioned that the therapy was an established healthcare profession, addressing the patients’ physical, emotional, cognitive, and social needs.
A qualified music therapist, usually after elaborate sessions with patients, diagnoses the illnesses and prescribes suitable treatment procedures that may range from creating and singing music to listening to music, Mahmudul Hasan said.
‘A very new concept here,’ remarked Salam but hoped once introduced the therapy would benefit the patients.
As a beginning Hasan thinks of not-so-costly a setup. ‘It just needs you to put together some musical instruments in a room that has been soundproofed,’ says the violinist, who, though hopeful, is aware like others at the BSMMU that it may take music therapy long to get acceptance from the country’s larger medical community and patients as well.
-With New Age input
