The 75-year-old Minnat Ali, who suffers from kidney ailments, had to come all the way to Dhaka from Comilla to see a doctor. His son, who lives in Azimpur, secured an appointment with a private practitioner.
At the doctor’s chamber, they were faced with a long queue and despite Minnat’s son’s request to the doctor’s assistant to consider his father’s old age and allow them to get attention before others, they had to wait for nearly three hours.
Minnat’s experience is not an exceptional one. For more than 10m senior citizens in the country, this is reality. Not only are there no separate specialised hospitals to tend to their needs, even special units are missing in public or private hospitals.
The health sector’s generally booming situation belies the condition of care for elderly. With so many super-specialist, specialist and sub-specialist doctors in various fields, with the health ministry opening up new areas of study to increase standards; specialised treatment for senior citizens still remains ignored.
Experts say because they are in the advanced stage of their lives, senior citizens are more prone to diseases than their younger counterparts. Most suffer from various ailments including diabetes, high blood pressure and complications of bone, kidney and heart. Psychological issues are also commonplace.
Treatment of the elderly is treated as a specialisation all over the world. Geriatrics aims to promote health by preventing and treating diseases and disabilities in older people.
However, even though our neighbour, India, and other developed countries have already established separate geriatric medicine departments in both private and public hospitals, there are no visible initiatives in our country.
Over the last three decades, the average age of Bangladeshis has risen by 13 years. In 1981, it was 55 years, while in 2012, Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics put the figure at 67 years and two months. 6.8% of the population are over 60 years of age.
The government has set up over fifty old people’s homes in the country and others have been established through private initiatives. Most have limited capacity so only a small section can be housed there.
The health ministry claims that that these establishments are providing residents with proper care, but Health Rights Movement chief and former BMA chief Dr Rashid-E-Mahbub disagrees.
“It is hard to accept but the reality is the same for both public and private ventures. They have opened up old orphanages instead of old homes. None of them have specialised doctors, nurses, technicians, psychologists, labs and other facilities needed to ensure proper treatment of old-age complications.”
Present statistics show that there is one doctor for 3,012, a single bed for 2,665, and one nurse for 6,342 patients.
Dr Khondokar Md Sifayetullah, director general of health services, told the Dhaka Tribune: “Considering the total population, the patient ratios with doctors, nurses, technicians and other facilities are very high. Even though senior citizens need special care, there is not much that we can do for them.”