Public healthcare in a mess

Healthcare and public health sector in the country is in a mess, if not marked by total anarchy. Physicians' consultation fees know no limit, diagnostic centres operate without proper facilities and a number of them without licences, so do a few blood banks, doctors in rural healthcare centres are prone to remain absent and last but not least, essential drugs become costlier with no holds barred. And all these negative developments are taking place in a country where the large majority of the population are poor. Their limited access to healthcare system is further complicated by bad food habits and adulteration of almost every item on their menu.
Private practice by government-appointed doctors is comparable to private coaching by teachers of educational institutions to the neglect of their main duty, which for teachers is classroom teaching and for physicians, hospital duty. However, the comparison ends there: a teacher charges Tk 1,000-1,500 for a month but a senior health consultant realises fees ranging between Tk 600-1,200 for a single visit. The number of patients such doctors attend is in between 20-50. In a country where the average annual income has only recently crossed $1,000 ($1,190, according to the latest information), is not it outrageous for a doctor to earn Tk 40,000-50,000 a day? And this is in addition to the salary s/he draws from the public hospital. Then there are other hidden incomes in the form of commission on the various tests they suggest for patients in designated diagnostic centres. Allegedly their purses fatten also from prescriptions of medicines from certain companies.  
Clearly, healthcare in public hospitals remains a neglected issue simply because of senior doctors' preoccupation elsewhere. In a handful of private hospitals located in the capital and a few other cities, medical treatment available is of high standard but the costs are forbidding for most people. Then there are some modest health facilities where the best of the medical care may not be available but at least they are of valuable service in time of emergency. In such facilities too, treatment may be less expensive but those remain beyond the reach of the lower middle class people, let alone the poor. Below those facilities, there are numerous healthcare entities which are totally unfit to give healthcare to patients. At times dreadful stories of patients' sufferings come to the open courtesy of the media. The existence of poor and substandard health facilities has even encouraged laymen to pose as veteran surgeons and medical professionals. A few such fake doctors are arrested from time to time.
Alongside such medical malpractices, pharmaceutical companies are hiking prices of medicines. Undoubtedly, the frontrunners among them have earned enough reputation for quality production even from abroad. No wonder, they are exporting medicines to several countries. But then spurious medicines also make headlines from time to time. The tragedy and scandal involving paracetamol and the consequent court verdict prove how dangerous a game some people do play with human life. It is time such anarchy in the pharmaceutical production was totally eliminated. In fact, a comprehensive health policy is the order of the day to take care of all such malpractices and irregularities.