Hospital fined for risky blood transfusion

A mobile court yesterday fined Regent Hospital Ltd in the capital's Mirpur Tk 6 lakh for transfusing blood without compulsory tests and selling drugs at higher prices by forging the original price tags.

Rapid Action Battalion-4 Executive Magistrate Sarwoer Alam raided the hospital around 1:30pm and caught the hospital staff red-handed. The court saw the hospital's drug store selling a medicine at Tk 500 after forging its original price tag of Tk 60.

During the drive, the court also found an electric heater stove in one of its operation theatres (OT) where they used to cook rice.

Contacted, Rabiul Islam, director (admin) of the hospital, admitted that they transfused blood without compulsory tests but said they did it out of “urgency”.

About cooking in OT, he said the room was abandoned since they had another OT which was serving the patients.

Rabiul could not say anything about the high price of the medicine as “the pharmacy was not under him”.

In a separate drive, the same court fined Mirpur's Popular Diagnostic Centre (branch-2) Tk 6 lakh for various irregularities including using expired reagents and forging pathological reports.

This correspondent contacted two officials of the diagnostic centre, but they declined to talk.