With Bangladesh facing a massive shortage of technologists, the government has decided to outsource 386 medical technologists to provide emergency services to Covid-19 patients.
Of them, 366 will be designated to laboratories and 20 to radiography.
Following a request from the Health Services Division of the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, the Finance Ministry on Tuesday gave its consent to pay for the outsourcing.
According to the plan, the Health Ministry will outsource the technologists for a year to all hospitals dealing with Covid-19 treatment and the 29 labs that are currently testing samples of suspected patients around the country.
Dhaka Medical College Hospital will get eight technologists for lab and two for radiography, while Shaheed Suhrawardy Medical College and Hospital and Mugda General Hospital will get six each for labs and two each for radiography.
Kuwait Bangladesh Friendship Government Hospital and Kurmitola General Hospital will get six each for labs and two each for radiography, while Bashundhara Convention Centre Grid Hospital, dedicated to treatment of Covid-19 patients, will get 22 lab technologists and six for radiography.
The government will appoint 106 lab technologists at 53 district sadar and general hospitals, while 116 technologists will be appointed for 29 Covid-19 testing labs across Bangladesh in line with the plan.
The medical technologists employed in Dhaka metropolitan areas will get a monthly service fee of Tk27,013, while those working in areas under the other eight city corporations and Savar municipality will get Tk25,558.
Medical technologists appointed in areas other than these specified ones will get Tk24,875 per month.
The government came up with the outsourcing plan amid the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, as no medical technologists — who conduct tests and analyze body fluids at laboratories — were appointed at the state-run hospitals in the last eight years.
According to World Health Organization guidelines, the ratio of doctors and medical technologists should be 1:5.
But the ratio is almost the opposite — 4:1 — in Bangladesh, which means the country has only one medical technologist to attend to 100,000 people on average.
Until Wednesday afternoon, the health authorities in Bangladesh recorded 7,103 Covid-19 cases and 163 deaths from the deadly disease around the country.
According to media reports, of the total number of Covid-19 cases, around 800, were healthcare professionals, including doctors and nurses.