An article carried by a local English daily recently moved many who read it to tears. Hasna Moudud wrote it about the tragic events that led to the death of her son because of what she alleged as negligence and incompetence in a local five-star hospital.
Her son’s life was cut short at the prime age of 37. He did not die of a massive heart attack, or in a case of terminal cancer. He died of dengue.
Dengue is a well-known illness in Bangladesh. Many had died of this illness in the 1980s when dengue had struck the country as an epidemic, and its treatment was not known. Since then, treatment for dengue has become stereotyped.
A timely visit to the doctor and a blood test is enough to ensure whether a patient has dengue or not. In case the dengue virus shows in the blood test, the treatment is simple, not at all costly, and almost 100% assured.
Hasna Moudud’s son was taken to the hospital on time. In fact, his illness was duly diagnosed as an attack of dengue. Thereafter, according to what Hasna Moudud wrote in her article, her son was given antibiotics and moved to the ICU.
The hospital later asked her to airlift her son to Singapore that no doubt underlined that there was a major mishandling in the treatment. According to family sources, the hospital “dilly-dallied” in releasing him. That delayed moving him to Singapore with the urgency that it demanded.
Hasna Moudud’s son died while waiting in the airstrip in Singapore waiting to be taken to the hospital.
According to statements made in the media by family sources, an ambulance that was supposed to be waiting in the airport arrived inordinately late. When it arrived, the son had passed away.
Therefore, there is an issue about the delay that would need to be resolved if there is going to be an investigation of the death, which appears in the media to be a case where the patient died due to negligence of the care givers, from the hospital in Dhaka and the one in Singapore.
Hasna Moudud’s husband is Barrister Moudud Ahmed, a well-known lawyer of the country. There has been no news on whether he would seek legal action in the matter. In any other country, this is a case where the doctors and the hospital in Dhaka would have been taken to court and made to pay through the nose in settling the matter.
In Bangladesh, even if Barrister Moudud were to consider taking the matter to court, there is almost 100% certainty that his attempt would be futile. The same hospital has had many such cases against it, and not even in one had the hospital been made to take responsibility for the deaths, let alone make any financial settlements.
It is not just this five-star hospital against which there are many cases of alleged malpractice, many, as in the instance of Hasna Moudud’s son, leading to death. The same is the reality in other five-star hospitals, in private clinics, in government hospitals, and in the hands of doctors in private practice.
The health care system in Bangladesh is a killing field for patients. Patients die in these places like guinea pigs, and those they leave behind do not even have the right to ask why their loved ones have died and about the details of such unexpected deaths.
In fact, in Bangladesh, there is perhaps no family that has not lost a close member like the Moududs to negligence in the hospitals/clinics or in the hands of doctors in private practice.
There is an eerie truth about the health care system in Bangladesh. Doctors and hospitals in the country are blissfully free of any worries about anyone dying under their care. There has never been a case in this country where a doctor or a hospital has been sued in a court of law successfully. If there are any malpractice laws in the country, neither patients/their families nor their lawyers have any knowledge about it.
If Bangladesh had malpractice laws like in Western countries or anywhere near that, most lawyers in the country would be pursuing malpractice suits against doctors and hospitals only and nothing else.
Bangladesh is, in fact, potentially a paradise for practicing malpractice laws, only if there had been a way of taking doctors and hospitals to court. The damn care attitude with which doctors and hospitals deal with patients indicate that they have no concerns about what they do to patients.
There is, of course, a positive side to the hospitals and doctors in the country. They are capable of providing excellent health care where they know if they do not, they would be personally or institutionally held responsible.
Thus, the hospital where Moudud’s son died is also one where some of its doctors have a proven record of providing treatment that one would expect in the best hospitals in the world.
If the doctors in this hospital or in the same standard hospitals elsewhere in the country treat a patient that is a family member of the owners, then the tables are instantly turned in favour of the patient. If the patient is related to a VVIP, then too the patient that is otherwise treated as dirt under our health care system, becomes royalty.
Therefore, in reality, these magnificent five-star hospitals we see in the country are there for treatment of their own people and the VVIPs of the country. The rest who go there for treatment, go there depending on mercy of the Almighty.
This is an absurd reality, and since it involves human lives, it is one that should be legally, morally, and ethically detestable for everyone. The way out of this detestable reality is to establish malpractice laws and make it easy for patients and their families to access such laws in Bangladesh.
If doctors and hospitals in Western countries were told that doctors and hospitals in Bangladesh do not need to buy malpractice insurance because there is no need of it, they would never believe it.
Unfortunately, there is a complete absence of government awareness and the politicians are equally in denial for introducing executable malpractice laws against doctors/hospitals in the country.
Their denial is a mystery because many of them, if not all, have been victims at the hands of doctors and hospitals. Therefore, the only way to avoid the predicament of the Moududs is to create awareness among citizens about executable malpractice laws and do something about it.
It is a pity that the civil society that is so concerned about freethinking right now, has had no time see our health care system for the killing field it is, where the only rights patients have is praying to the Almighty for cure.