A picture of DMCH

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Dhaka Medical College Hospital (DMCH) is the only option for poor patients who cannot access the highly priced private medical care. Admission and most of the charges for services at DMCH are supposed to be free or the patients are required on paper to pay nominally for the same. But even the taking of admission in the hospital involves paying to touts.
Doctors do not pay adequate attention to the patients here or attend to them casually. The patients are advised by the touts to go to the private chambers of some of these government appointed doctors for treatment. The patients there are similarly advised to get their various medical tests done at private diagnostic centres although the hospital has its own testing units. The obvious reason for this is the underhand arrangement between these centres and the concerned circles in the DMCH.
All kinds of medicines including life saving antibiotics are supposed to be dispensed to patients at free or highly subsidised costs. But this is hardly done. Except for some ordinary medicines, the higher priced but badly needed medicines are seldom supplied from the hospital's stores on the ground of their non availability. But there is no difficulty in finding these medicines -- which have gone out from the hospital's stores -- in private stores outside the hospital's premises.
The poor patients feel arm-twisted to buy these medicines at unreasonable prices. The laundry services of the hospital is very shabby. The quality of food supplied to patients is also of poor quality. Reports about corruption or money sharing between food caterers, cleaners and the hospital's staff, appeared in sections of the media but no effective action has yet come to address the problem that lies at the root of the inefficient services.
The above picture of the DMCH is symbolic of the state of public sector medical care throughout the country. The public hospitals at the district or sub-district level are also not being managed properly. There has to be an appropriate system of accountability for all publicity-administerial healthcare facilities. Without establishing the minimum of accountability in the public health-care system, the resources that are being allowed from the government budgetary for the upkeep, maintenance and operations of such facilities, will continue to be spent very poorly and inefficiently.
Junaid Douza
Srestha View, Shantinagar, Dhaka