Imported medical equipment worth crores of taka is finally being sold by the kilo at scrap shops — what news could be more dismaying? This is not merely shortsightedness; it is a living document of the health sector’s gross mismanagement, boundless corruption and waste of state money. In parliament, the health minister himself has said that during the tenure of the previous political government there was no specific arrangement to protect this imported equipment — that it was bought in an unplanned manner, with the base aim only of lining the pockets of those who take commissions.
The sorry fate of two radiotherapy machines worth Tk 18 crore, left lying for years at government hospitals in Khulna and Faridpur, is clear proof of this. Beyond that, countless hospitals across the country have X-ray machines but no technician to run them. Laboratory machines worth crores of taka lie under a layer of dust because no lab technician has been appointed to operate them. Year after year, this valuable equipment sits shut in wooden crates until it becomes unusable and useless.
In effect, the artificial shortage of technicians and the situation of idle machines in government hospitals are created so that private hospitals can benefit from it — because a class of government doctors, nurses and technicians carry on private practice at those private hospitals. In collusion, they force the public into high-cost tests there. This unethical trade can be stopped if government doctors, nurses and technicians are barred from private practice at private hospitals. If necessary, they can perform extra duty in the afternoon at the government hospital itself in exchange for a reasonable fee, but they must not be allowed to serve at private hospitals, clinics and diagnostic centres. By the rules they cannot, since entering government service requires severing ties with private and even social institutions. And these private health centres must appoint their own full-time, permanent staff rather than part-timers, or else their licences must be cancelled.
Ultrasonography, ECG, anaesthesia and ventilator machines are brought into government hospitals at a cost of lakhs of taka, yet it is deeply distressing that they are then kept locked away year after year. Alongside this, our unplanned purchasing must stop. High-technology ICU and scanner machines are sent to hospitals that lack adequate voltage or air-conditioning, where they are bound to be ruined unused. Some rural hospitals have no surgeon for a caesarean operation, yet costly modern operating-theatre equipment has lain boxed up there for a long time. In the purchase of medical equipment, the financial advantage of the syndicate of importers, bureaucrats and middlemen — and the greed for huge commissions — beyond the actual need is also to blame. There is, moreover, no realistic coordination between the planning wing of the Directorate General of Health Services and the field-level hospitals, and there are allegations that machines are bought, even where there is no manpower, only to embezzle and waste allocated budget money.
Meanwhile, no bureaucrat, contractor or director has so far faced exemplary punishment for the offence of destroying crores of taka worth of machines through negligence. It is this culture of impunity that has given corruption an institutional form. For this reason, a high-powered expert audit committee must be formed under the Health Ministry. No approval should be given to purchase any new equipment without accurate statistics on hospitals’ physical infrastructure and skilled manpower. In addition, a central online database must be created to monitor the functionality of equipment at every government hospital in the country, so that it remains visible to the public which machine is working and which is not. In short, goods bought with the people’s tax money cannot be allowed to be finished off at a scrap shop.
বাংলায় মূল প্রতিবেদন পড়ুন · Read the original Bengali report