Public healthcare system

That the country's health sector is in life-support has been evidenced in some of the recent incidents. There was a time when people mostly spoke of their sufferings due to inadequate or lack of facilities in the hospitals across the country -- with no exception to the high-profile public medical institutions in the capital. Lately, these sufferings bulged to bizarre proportions by the mercenary motives and malpractices, leading, at times, to heinous criminality in both the public and private hospitals and clinics. Besides, counterfeit drugs and medicines have for a long time been a major cause of worry.
Needless to say, stopping the indiscipline and malpractices in the health sector is highly challenging. To start with, bringing some semblance of order is the foremost requirement. But given the state of things, it is more than apparent that a 'will' for the purpose is utterly missing. The latest in the series of the malpractices, as reported in the media, is the mushroom growth of unlicensed hospitals and fake medical practitioners in the country, not only in the remote nooks and crannies but surprisingly also in the capital itself. Days back, a mobile court launched by the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) found that a private hospital at Agargaon in the city was being run by fake physicians, untrained nursing staff and technicians in extremely unhygienic conditions. Shocking as it was, the so-called hospital housed patients who were to undergo surgical procedures to be performed by 'lungi'-clad illiterate 'surgeons'. This incident was preceded by another of the same nature a week before, that too at the prime hub of the capital on Green Road.
The obvious question is: how do these not-so-clandestine criminal acts flourish? Perhaps, the more appropriate way of asking is: are these allowed to operate only to be stopped once in a while? An appalling revelation that might attest to such suspicion is that there are reportedly 465 licensed hospitals and 1,305 laboratories and diagnostic centres in the capital, but those unauthorised are twice as much. No amount of excuse on the part of the health administration would suffice to justify the difficulties in bringing these criminal operatives to book.
A recent Transparency International, Bangladesh (TIB) report on the public health sector has unearthed outrageous stories of corruption that clearly reflect the miserable state of the country's health sector. The TIB report has, among others, found multi-layered corruption of myriad varieties -- from bribery in recruitment, posting and transfer of physicians, to 'commission trade' between the physicians and the diagnostic centres, bribery in getting hospital seats, to connivance with private clinics and their touts and agents and so on. Although the authorities came quite strongly to reject the findings of the report, the people who live in this land and are constrained to seek medical service from the public institutions must not brush off the allegations as it is they who experience these malpractices routinely, day in and day out. Under such circumstances, asking for an overhaul of the system makes little sense, not even for the sake of populism. But can't there be a facade of minimum discipline in the healthcare sector so that those who are not into the game can seek to improve things, or, at least, get support from the authorities concerned?