Doctors and hapless patients
Photo: STAR
When no one is accountable for one's own deeds and go unpunished for mischief year after year, then anything is possible in a country. In any civilized country, Emergency Room (ER) is there to treat the patients on an urgent basis and the physicians are there 24 hours, 7 days a week and 365 days a year. Depending on the severity of the ailments, either the patients get admitted to the hospital or are released from the ER after treatment. There is no day and night in any hospital and they cannot think of running the hospital without doctors, nurses, pharmacists, lab-technicians round the clock. The concept of outdoor clinic is for those patients whose treatments are not urgent in nature. But if any patient goes to ER, they do not go unattended. The ER doctors have to fulfil their obligations. However, it is possible only in Bangladesh that a patient will have to wait for six hours to get a physician's attention. Not only that the relatives of the patient have to carry him on their shoulders from door to door. These doctors, nurses, employees would have been in jail without bond by now in the USA. Most of the doctors here work 14-15 hours a day to a minute detail, still they have to face the court and law-suits of the patients because of unintentional mistakes or negligence. In Bangladesh, as we have no law and order, the doctors are roaming freely, no matter what irresponsible acts they commit. There is no basic difference between these doctors and other killers and muggers. Unless the total hospital system is revamped, we will see more poor people die without any attention of the doctors, nurses, employees of the hospitals.
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