Hospital comes to temporary halt
Both our editorials today demonstrate the disregard our leaders and public servants have for the people who elect them and whom they are supposed to serve.
WHY the entire professional staff including doctors and nurses should be made to stand as the welcoming committee for the health minister's visit to Barisal Sher-e-Bangla Medical College is beyond our understanding. This is precisely what happened on August 18. What makes us sit up and notice is the fact that all medical services were stopped for two and half hours so that the honourable minister could finish his visit.
It is a shame to see patients being carried out by family members as wheel chair or trolley services were unavailable. Patients suffering from serious injury had to go to other institutions to have their x-rays done as attending to the minister's visit far outweighed the needs of the patients. We dread to think about those patients needing serious surgery or suffering from other ailments that required immediate attention during those hours. Patients go to public hospitals because they need medical care that is affordable. Unfortunately, that option was taken away for sometime from them on that day.
The hospital authority was completely out of order and the minister should have pulled it up for halting hospital function during the period of his visit. Such practice needs to be stopped. Precisely how the hospital authorities allowed essential services to come to a halt needs to be questioned. Doctors, nurses and technicians are stationed at a medical institution for the sole purpose of attending to the sick, not to be attending a dignitary every time he or she happens to visit. We demand an enquiry and appropriate action against the responsible hospital officials.
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