The health care system in the country is still far from meeting standards despite the health authorities’ claiming credit for low infection rates and speedy vaccinations.
Despite the government’s achievement in vaccinating the majority of the population, the health sector has not developed in proportion to the massive influx of the Covid-19 pandemic waves.
The authorities seem relatively complacent about their achievement, with Health Minister Zahid Maleque hailing the officials and staff of the health directorate and ministry for their unrelenting efforts throughout the Covid crisis to keep infections and deaths lower.
On the other hand, Dr Farid Uddin Miah, director (hospitals and clinics) of the health directorate, told Dhaka Tribune that a central oxygen system has been installed in over 130 hospitals.
He added that the process of providing required manpower is progressing well and hundreds of ICUs have been installed in a year.
The facilities of the hospitals, like establishing central oxygen systems, installing oxygen storage, ICUs, recruiting manpower and so on have been upgraded during the pandemic, he said.
However, DGHS data show that no government hospitals in Rangamati, Khagrachari, Lakshmipur, Chandpur and Panchagarh have a central oxygen supply system. The installation of the system is underway in Netrokona, Jhalokati and Moulvibazar.
Contrary to the health official’s claims of hundreds of ICUs being established, the data found more than one-third of districts don’t have any ICUs in their government hospitals.
Institute of Epidemiology, Disease Control and Research (IEDCR) Principal Scientific Officer (PSO) Dr ASM Alamgir warned against complacency, saying that the situation may turn bad any moment.
He believes more variants could come in the near future and the country might face another such surge anytime.
According to the senior official, while the country has the capacity to tackle a sudden surge in cases, it is important that adherence to health rules is enforced.
Professor Alamgir stressed the importance of health authorities tracking new variants.
Veteran virologist Prof Dr Nazrul Islam, a member of the NTAC, believes that lack of research in new variants is where the health sector has definitely lagged behind.
Saying that the health authorities did not search for new variants and merely kept the public informed of hospital developments, he added that hospitals should have been equipped with every facility in the wake of an emergency during the pandemic.
“There is no visible progress other than administering vaccines during this time. The government always talks about preventive measures but rarely showed improvement in providing health care services,” he said.
He questioned if the health care service is indeed sufficient why so many people were still dying.
He said that covid-linked deaths are not being investigated properly and the government has also failed in a proper dissemination of health-related information.
According to Dr Nazrul Islam, the latest special vaccination campaign has shown the role of providing the right information to the right person at the right time from a public health perspective.
Bangladesh Health Rights Movement Chairman Professor Rashid E Mahbub says that during the pandemic not only were patients harassed but there were also mounting allegations against physicians not visiting the covid patients in persons.
According to the eminent healthcare expert, along with failing to bring about physiological changes among the physicians, the government has also failed to deploy skilled people at the right place.
“They only recruited but did not initiate any initiative to create more skilled health care professionals for complicated services like managing ICUs or kidney dialysis,” he said.
According to him, the government needs to focus on non-communicable diseases (NCDs) right now as these diseases are growing fast and causing more deaths from viral diseases like covid.
He emphasized a strong campaign to make people aware and change their food habits.
Criticising the DGHS, he said that the official health authority could not even bring private hospitals under registration to make them accountable.
According to the DGHS, only 3500 private hospitals and clinics have been registered with the directorate while over 12,000, including the registered, have applied for registration.
Installing a central oxygen system, oxygen storage are part of modern hospital facilities that should have been installed earlier in the first place, said Mahbub.
He added that health care is nowhere near its best state and there is no reason to be satisfied with recent developments.
