A city hospital’s illegal practices uncovered
That a well-known health facility like Dr Sirajul Islam Medical College Hospital in the capital's Mouchak area would do three tests on one petri dish and use expired reagents and accessories in the operation theatre, intensive care unit (ICU), and even in the Covid-19 isolation unit, is outrageous. These anomalies have been discovered in a recent mobile court drive conducted by a Rab executive magistrate's team. The mobile court has also found that the hospital's isolation unit was not maintaining complete isolation, thereby risking infecting other patients with coronavirus.
If expired surgical accessories are used in an operation theatre, patients' lives are put at risk as they might develop various infections. And putting three blood samples in a single petri dish for every test means that patients will not get correct blood test results. These are very basic things that a hospital ought to maintain. The question is, how did the hospital manage to continue with these illegal practices for so long?
The medical malpractices discovered in this hospital also make us wonder about the situation in other reputed hospitals in the city and elsewhere. Only last month, a mobile court drive in the city's Regent Hospital found that the hospital authorities issued fake Covid-19 certificates and charged patients for test and treatment, violating an agreement with the government. There must be many other hospitals and clinics that are also violating rules in the absence of any overseeing mechanism.
Although we appreciate the random mobile court drives which often expose many harmful, illegal practices by the hospitals, we would like to see concrete measures from the health ministry to ensure that hospitals and test labs abide by the standard rules of operation. There must be a systematic monitoring mechanism in place to ensure that medical facilities are following rules and procedures before and after their licenses are renewed.
In this particular case, the hospital authorities should be held accountable for the medical malpractices going on there and for compromising patients' safety. Only fining them is not enough—they should be punished according to the law.
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