HC slams health ministry over graft

Except for a few honest individuals, the health sector is full of corrupt people from the top to bottom levels, said the High Court yesterday.

"The doctors are making profit in connivance with the pharmaceutical companies," the HC bench of Justice KM Kamrul Kader and Justice Mohammad Showkat Ali Chowdhury said during the hearing on a writ petition.

"Everything must have a limit. The health ministry is always ready to make purchases. Only Allah knows what remains left in those boxes. You are stealing 17 crore people's money.

"From how many people will you seek pardon? You would not have been able to steal if you believed in afterlife," the HC bench told the lawyers for the health ministry and the inspector general of prisons.

The petition, seeking necessary directives to appoint doctors in prisons across the country for proper treatment of inmates, was filed as a public interest litigation by Supreme Court lawyer JR Khan Robin on February 18, 2019.

"As children of the land, we know many things. I went to Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University for treatment. What I saw is worse than the condition of a small hospital in a foreign country," Justice Kamrul Kader said.

There was corruption in the purchase of equipment for Faridpur Medical College Hospital even though it is near Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's area, said the judge.

Most of the government doctors deprive the people of rural areas of proper treatment by living in Dhaka where they have private practice, he added. 

Such corruption could not have taken place if the Anti-Corruption Commission was working properly, the court said.

There are many innocent people in prisons, and all the inmates must be provided with proper treatment, it said.

The court then directed the government to recruit doctors for 16 vacant posts in prisons.

Secretaries to the ministries of health and home, DG of the Directorate General of Health Services, and the IG of prisons were asked to comply with the order and to submit a compliance report to the court by June 6.

Earlier in the day, the office of the IG of prisons submitted a report through its lawyer to the HC bench, saying that a total of 125 physicians were appointed on deputation to the prisons, but 16 posts for doctors remains vacant.

Deputy Attorney General SK Saifuzzaman represented the state while lawyer Shafiqul Islam appeared for the IG of prisons.