Lone Govt Cancer Hospital: X-ray machine lies idle for 2 decades

In 1998, the authorities of National Institute of Cancer Research and Hospital (NICRH) bought an X-ray machine imported from Germany.

But it never reached the hospital’s radiology department, where it was supposed to be used.

For nearly two decades, the device has been gathering dust inside a room of the hospital in the capital’s Mohakhali, depriving patients of treatment and wasting resources.

Speaking to The Daily Star, radiology department officials at the NICRH, the country’s lone specialised public hospital for cancer treatment, said a Bangladeshi agent, Natasa Corporation Limited, sold the machine and it was kept in the hospital’s room in 2000.

The firm was supposed to do the machine’s test runs there and hand it to the radiology department on getting its clearance, Associate Professor Mushtaque Ahmed Jalali said. “But the machine never arrived at the department.”

On several occasions in the past, the department wrote to the hospital’s director, requesting him to take initiatives for ensuring that the machine is delivered to the department, but to no avail.

He alleged that the Bangladeshi firm took money from the hospital without completing the work.

No one in the hospital knows how much the machine cost.

When The Daily Star tried to communicate with officials of Natasa Corporation Limited, it learnt that the firm was shut down after its owner died in 2016. It was situated near Banglamotor.

One Waliur Rahman, who claimed to have been an administrative official of the firm when the X-ray machine was sold, said he did not know why the device was not handed over.

He said most of the employees of that firm were later recruited at another company named Natasa Healthcare Products Ltd.

Contacted, Monowar Hossain, a marketing manager of Natasa Healthcare Products Ltd, said, “When the machine was installed [in the room], we found that it did not meet the specifications.”

He said he could not recall what happened next as it was an old issue. 

A hospital official, wishing not to be named, said none of the directors of the hospital took measures to solve the issue in the last two decades. “Whatever they did was to protect the interests of a vested quarter.”

In the meantime, the X-ray machine remains non-operational and the hospital struggles to carry out the tests with its lone operational X-ray machine. On average, 80 to 100 X-rays are carried out daily with the device.

There is another X-ray machine, which has remained out of order for nearly one-and-a-half years, said hospital sources.

Asked, the hospital’s director Prof Md Moarraf Hossen, who went on leave preparatory to retirement (LPR) on Sunday, said he took charge on October 24, 2014 and that the device was bought way before that.

“I am not aware of the issue. So I cannot make any comment,” he told this correspondent on Wednesday.

When his attention was drawn to the issue, Transparency International Bangladesh’s Executive Director Iftekharuzzaman said, “These are indications of institutionalisation of corruption in this important hospital run with public money. There can hardly be any worse examples of irresponsibility, and there is an absolute lack of internal control and accountability.”

He also said it was surprising that the agent that supplied the machine was not held accountable for so long or for failing to meet the primary conditions of public procurement.

“It begs the question whether the party had collaborators within the hospital who may have been illicitly benefitted, which must be investigated by the Anti-Corruption Commission,” he said.

He suggested a major overhaul of the hospital’s management immediately.