Healthcare delivery
Photo: Wahid Adnan / driknews
An important and investigative report was published in the front page of a local English daily on June 29. It was about a very sad truth. However, I wonder if any eyebrows will be raised by the officials at the ministry of health. Through this letter, may I as a citizen draw the kind attention of the Hon. Minister of Health to this matter, and the suggestions given for serious consideration. Only the building is there, but as far as healthcare is concerned, it is just fleecing the poor patients, nothing else! Let me quote from the report published, which is as follows: "After one hour of waiting a para-medic attended her (the patient) in a filthy room, checking just blood pressure and weight that cost her Tk100!" Should not the ministry of health take up this issue? Small wonder that 'Kabiraj', 'Compounders' (called village doctors), and sundry 'Pirs' and 'Faith Healers' are entrenched as rural healthcare providers, which cannot be overcome by such poor examples of healthcare services; which is the usual experience of patients in the rural health centres. At least the cost for the alternative medications is much lower in comparison to the exorbitant charges of the Official Health Centres! May be, we should encourage qualified and proven (by reputation), Homeopaths and Kabiraj to utilise the healthcare centre premises, at a very nominal charge, so that availability of the health care facilities are centralised and if needed there can be some monitoring and help provided. That way the poor patients may be benefited. About surgical needs, the less said the better, at the village level.
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