The health ministry is not implementing the recommendations of the high-profile national technical advisory committee on coronavirus, leaving the patients to suffer.
The committee after its formation on April 19 advised the ministry to take an integrated management approach of all hospitals to lessen the sufferings of the people so that patients do not need to run from one hospital to another without treatment.
They also suggested giving oxygen support to patients at the emergency of all hospitals before referring them to another facility.
The technical committee also suggested the health ministry to expand the scope of testing quickly and to take the number of daily testing to at least 10,000.
Bangladesh Post finds that none of those recommendations have been implemented yet.
“We can suggest. We cannot execute. The DG health is the authority to execute,” Prof Dr Mohammad Shahidullah, the chair of the committee, told Bangladesh Post on Sunday.
Director General for Health Services Prof Abul Kalam Azad acknowledged those issues and told Bangladesh Post that the health ministry failed to convince the owners of the private hospitals and other professional bodies that both Covid and non-Covid patients can be admitted in the same hospital.
“And then we have taken a measure. We introduced few numbers and asked hospitals to call our control room keeping the patients waiting, instead of referring to another hospital. Our control room will connect the patient with a hospital,” he said. “And its working. We’re getting benefits”.
But the daughter of a government Additional Secretary Gautam Aich Sarke complained that his father died of negligence on Friday as she could not admit her to any hospital.
“He needed ICU badly. I could not manage that for him, though he was not tested for coronavirus,” the daughter, also a doctor, said on Saturday after his father died with kidney problems ended up at the Kurmitola General Hospital, dedicated for Covid patients.
Prof Azad, the director general, however, told Bangladesh Post that they were “very sad” to know that, but the control room “did not give me any feedback that any support was sought from him”.
“We have sent those numbers (01313791130, 01313791138, 01313791139, and 01313791140) to every hospital. We advertised those numbers in media and also did video conferencing with emergency medical officer”.
He, however, said a new order for all hospitals is coming soon.
As of Sunday, Bangladesh confirmed 14657 cases and 228 deaths from coronavirus since the detection of the first cases in the country on March 8.
The number of testing has been increased gradually. But it is still limited between 5000 and 6000.
Prof Shahidullah, also a senior child specialist and president of Bangladesh Medical and Dental Council, said they had clearly said that any hospital cannot deny any patient - be it Covid-19 or non-Covid.
“They (hospitals) cannot say you are Covid or not. They must start treatment and then start testing or then if needed they can refer to any hospital. And it’s not that they will just ask the patient to go to another hospital on their own. We suggested keeping ambulance services for them. It’s easy for our health ministry to keep 20 to 30 ambulances in Dhaka for the patients to be referred to another hospital.”
Prof Sahidullah said they had also advised that all hospitals would come under a network.
“For example, DMCH will know the situation of Mughda Hospital or Kurmitola before they refer to a patient. And then they will give a slip to the patient with a written referral note that ‘we are sending the patient after telephone conversation with your hospital’, so that the hospital cannot deny admission.
“This whole issue can be controlled by the DG office. They (DG office) will maintain a dash board with details of all hospitals. And then hospitals will call to that control room to know the situation of another hospital.
“It’s just a management issue. No extra money is involved in it,” Prof Shahidullah told Bangladesh Post.
“But now patients are running from one hospital to another. If this continues, we all will die,” he said, adding that the hospital “must ensure that the patient will get a seat to the hospital they are referring to. Then patients will not die on the street.”
“We have given all the solutions. They (health ministry) said its good solution. We will do it. But they are not doing it,” he lamented.
On testing, Prof Shahidullah said, “Bangladesh has so many PCR machines to make testing available to people. Just the DG office needs to make kits available to them so that we can increase the capabilities to 10,000 to 12,000 a day. And we also suggested that the test results should be made available the next day”.
The director general for health said the ministry took the latest situation into consideration and would again issue notice instructing hospitals not to deny patients.
He said Bangladeshi doctors who work in European and American countries also made a guideline for the government. They also suggested that both Covid and non-covid patients can be treated in the same hospital.
“And if we can do it, then patients will not suffer. Our own internal (DG office) technical committee also agreed with them (foreign doctors’ guideline).
“So we are waiting for the final report from our internal technical committee. Hopefully By tomorrow we’ll get that report and after that our ministry can strongly argue with the hospital authorities,” the director general said.
The virus cases are, however, rising by the day.
Epidemiologists say it is on the upward trend, but they cannot predict when it will be plateaued since the lockdown is not strictly maintained.
“If we give any formula now, then it is likely to be proved wrong since we cannot ensure the lockdown strictly – sometimes its strict, sometimes its lose. On what basis we will predict,” Prof Shahidullah said quoting epidemiologists.