Functional equipment for public hospitals

As many as 85 per cent government hospitals across the country have malfunctioned testing equipment, according to a survey. Patients are not able to go through important tests like CT scan, X-ray, ECG, MRI etc in these public health care facilities. So, patients have to go to private clinics and diagnostic centres for undergoing pathological tests. But the cost of test is exorbitantly high in private facilities. Most of the patients coming to government hospitals are poor. Considering their financial constraints, the government should take every measure to equip public hospitals with all diagnostic machines and their operators. This will help poor patients receive treatment at an affordable cost.

Dhaka Medical College Hospital is the largest public hospital in Bangladesh. However, its MRI machine has reportedly been broken for seven months. Not just that, the hospital has a total of 200 malfunctioned diagnostic equipment. The situation is almost the same in almost every government hospital. Anyone who has ever visited a public hospital in the country might have seen and experienced the same problems. We wonder why the conditions of our healthcare facilities are so deplorable when a big portion of our health budget is allocated for infrastructure development and purchase of modern equipment.

The government should organise a separate technical department for repairing and maintenance of diagnostic equipment at government medical facilities operating throughout the country. The department could have a branch in every district which will not only take care of the equipment but train recruited machine operators. Also, there should be a monitoring mechanism in place to oversee that our public hospitals are run efficiently without which quality treatment can hardly be expected.

Ashikujaman Syed

Foreign Service Officer

Anhui Haikang Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd

Anqing, China

syedashikujaman@yahoo.com