The poor getting excluded from medicare
Exorbitantly high service charges in the private hospitals, especially at their intensive care units (ICU), have become a virtually insurmountable hurdle for patients from low and middle-income groups to get treatment there. The public hospitals, on the other hand, are almost inaccessible for such patients because too many patients are waiting in queues for too few ICUs. The result is that less privileged people have to either go without treatment or sell all their properties if they are to have treatment from a private hospital.
An exclusive report on this subject in Thursday's issue of this paper says how a transport worker had to finally embrace death in the corridor of the Dhaka Medical College Hospital (DMCH) while waiting for his turn at its ICU for treatment. In another case, a rickshaw-puller was charged nearly Tk.3 lakh for his son's treatment at a private hospital in the city.
There are also allegations of underhand dealings between some private hospitals and a handful of doctors of questionable integrity. The long and the short of such developments in the area of medical service is that gradually the medical service in the private sector has been going into the hands of people whose ultimate motive is to make a lucrative business out of the hapless patients' woes.
In the circumstances, it is only the rich who can afford the services of the private hospitals while the large majority of the population, for all practical purposes, has to wait at the queue at public clinics or go to the quacks.
Though the right to medical service is one of the basic human rights the poor and middle-income people are being deprived of the service in greater numbers every passing day.
The government, its health ministry in particular, therefore, owes an explanation to the public as to why the lower-income brackets of the people are gradually getting excluded from medical treatment.
The private hospitals, on their part, have no standard rules to fix fees and other charges for treatment. The situation calls for the government's strong monitoring in the hospital service sector, especially in fixing the rates of service charges at the private hospitals. The alleged nexus to fleece the patients in the private health service sector should also be brought government monitoring.
At the same time, the government should set some rules to standardise the different fees and charges for treatment at the private hospitals. For the poor patients the government will have to turn its attention to the public hospitals first since these hospitals can no more cope with the ever increasing number of patients. Their capacities are in need of drastic improvement. They need more equipment, wards, ICUs, doctors and nurses.
Along with addressing these shortcomings, the government should also prevail upon the private hospitals to earmark some of their wards and ICUs for treating the poor patients.
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