Public hospitals have to become better managed.
The recent case of a six-year-old girl having her arm amputated at Chittagong Medical College Hospital when she had only been admitted for treatment on her leg is appalling not just for the error which occurred, but because of the apparent subsequent cover-up by staff and continued delays in the progress of a probe inquiry into the incident.
Sadly, it is symptomatic of the poor state of the management and culture of our public hospitals that this is far from being an isolated instance of negligence and mistreatment.
Public hospitals are the only health care option available for the vast majority of the population. It is essential they are improved. The government needs to undertake comprehensive management reforms and to make sure all doctors and nurses become better paid, better trained and better disciplined.
There is no excuse for the lack of funding for new facilities and poor maintenance and management that afflict much of our public health sector.
We have the money to manage hospitals better. Unfortunately successive governments have chosen to waste money subsidising loss-making state owned enterprises like jute mills and banks, and subsidising the price of piped gas and electricity.
The government needs to get national priorities right and stop wasting tax-payer funds propping up chronically loss making state owned enterprises. It should spend public money more productively by ending wasteful subsidies and investing more in our public schools and hospitals.
Bangladesh has the funds to train more competent medical personnel. It has managed great strides in the past three decades in delivering cost-effective drugs and raising life expectancy across the population. There is no reason to expect that standards in public hospitals cannot also be raised higher.
The government must begin to invest properly in improving the management and maintenance of public hospitals to help deliver the better quality health care and support which our growing population needs.
