Editorial
PM warning to truant doctors
The under-served rural patients need their service
DOCTORS skipping their duties after being posted in the rural areas are failing on two counts: They are being insensitive to the suffering humanity as well as running foul of their own professional code of conduct. The Prime minister Sheikh Hasina has rightly taken them to task for their playing truant after being placed at their rural postings.
The main reason of why the rural patients are underserved is that the doctors posted there, more often than not, remain absent from their office. The state-owned rural clinics as a result are in a sad plight. Due to lack of proper attention, most of those clinics have become a huge drain on the government's resources. Patients who are still compelled to go there may, if they like, get treatment at the hands of the non-specialist staff or may go without treatment altogether. And those who can afford, shift to districts or even to the capital for treatment. But the latter option is rather punishing for them.
But why should doctors be so unhappy with their rural postings, since there is no difference in pays and perks between the rural and the city postings in government service? Moreover, can't the government expect some honesty from them so far as the terms of their service are concerned, let alone the sacrifice their calling demands? And when a prime minister has to step in to a warn section of the doctors and remind them of their responsibilities, it does not speak well of the community itself.
However, patients' suffering is not simply a rural experience. Even in their urban setting, they have to go through endless ordeals at the diagnostic clinics in particular. A section of the doctors attending them are alleged to be more interested in the commissions derived from referrals.
Consequently, they have to go through more diagnostic tests than they need. But had those doctors been more sympathetic and ready to listen to their patients' complaints, many of those tests would prove to be redundant. In the worst-case scenario, the patients have not only to pay through the nose for the unnecessary diagnostic tests, some ill-starred ones may even have to pay the ultimate price. Some black sheep in the profession have thus cast a blot on the entire community, where most other members are so responsible and highly respected for their professional excellence and humane attitude towards their patients.
Interestingly, among all other professions, it is only the doctors', that involves taking of an oath called Hippocratic Oath. This, among other conditions, asserts that that a doctor is a member of society with special obligations to all his fellow human beings.
As such, we expect that the doctors would at least be true to their professional ethics and serve the humanity on their own, without being told of their responsibilities towards their patients and the society at large.
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