Home Affairs Adviser Lieutenant General (Retd) Md Jahangir Alam Chowdhury on Tuesday reaffirmed the government's commitment to ensuring a safe and secure environment in the medical services.
"Recent incidents of attacks, vandalism and threats targeting doctors and healthcare facilities have raised serious concerns. The government is taking active steps to make hospitals and health centres safer, more favourable and people-friendly," he said.
The adviser was speaking as the chief guest at a session of the Home Ministry during the two-day Civil Surgeons Conference, held on May 12-13, said a Home Ministry press release.
The Health Ministry organized the event at the Shaheed Abu Sayed International Convention Centre in the capital on Tuesday morning.
Addressing the civil surgeons, Jahangir Alam emphasized the importance of strengthening collaboration with local administrations and the police department.
"You are among the most talented individuals in society. Public expectations are understandably high. As the driving force behind healthcare at the district level, your actions and decisions have a direct impact on people's lives," he said.
He described civil surgeons as lights of hope for people in distress and proposed several measures to make healthcare services more accessible and people-centric.
The proposals included taking the post-mortem services to the police station level, having women's post-mortems done by female doctors, having a female doctor do the examination in rape cases—if not available, have a female nurse do it and have a male doctor countersign it—closing private medical colleges without teachers and educational materials, forming an accreditation council to improve the quality of medical colleges, arranging for intern doctors to be trained for six months in cities and six months in villages, and increasing the honorarium while in villages, etc.
"If these steps are implemented, the people will get quick service and public suffering will be reduced," he said.
Jahangir also highlighted the crucial role of doctors in combating drug abuse and promoting mental health. He urged civil surgeons to work with police stations and the Department of Narcotics Control to strengthen rehabilitation and counselling programs.
Stating that there are some complaints from the public against doctors, he said that the medical profession is undoubtedly honourable. Doctors have the opportunity to provide the best services to the people and they are trying to do so.
"I want to believe that these complaints will be proven false," he added.
He further said that the biggest complaint of the public is that many government doctors do not appear in the hospitals within the stipulated time or do not stay full time.
In many upazilas or union health complexes, patients do not get treatment even after waiting for hours. This absence questions the quality of healthcare and creates a negative perception about the health sector, he continued.
In the question and answer session, the adviser answered various questions from the civil surgeons. Civil surgeons raised various demands with the adviser at this time.
The demands included granting recognition to district hospitals as Key Points installations (KPI) and increasing police patrols in the hospitals, modernizing the district post-mortem centre, providing gunmen for civil surgeons, etc.
The adviser assured that reasonable demands would be addressed with appropriate government support.
Special Assistant to the Chief Adviser on the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Professor Dr Md Sayedur Rahman, and Cabinet Secretary Dr Sheikh Abdur Roshid were also present at the session.
