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Medical service: Treatment or harassment?

Medical care service is a basic human right and the government is responsible for ensuring the medical service for its people. But Bangladesh is lagging behind in this sector due to corruption and mismanagement. And it is a critical problem in developing and transitional economies where government resources are already scarce. The government and privately run hospitals have earned a reputation of harassing who come for treatment of various illnesses. Soon after the patient's arrival at the hospital, they fall prey to cheats and a section of the dishonest hospital staff. The dirty floors and unhygienic atmosphere of the corridors in the public hospitals is enough to make a healthy human being sick. Inadequate quantity of Doctors can hardly provide service to the massive number of patients and patients has to make informal payments to obtain drugs which were supposed to be free. Hospital management is pretty much helpless to fulfill these high demands. Some organized groups start trying to transfer their patients to some private clinics where money turns out to be a very vital issue. Moreover service is not there even patient is willing to pay the price. The intangibility of service made it harder for the consumer as patient is paying thousand of Taka without even having a clear idea about the level of service the clinic can offer. Sometimes patient don't know the actual price they will pay for the treatment until after the process is complete. Mismanagement turns up to be the core issue for high price, absenteeism, duplicative drugs and equipment, inappropriate equipment located without consideration of true need. Nowadays only a bunch of the private hospitals and clinics are offering better and appropriate service. However this high price consumption is not reasonable to the mass people. Majority is helpless as greater demand than maximum available in supply is causing lower level service quality and fewer options. Government needs to expand the available public medical services and allocate more in people's health care sector. Private sector need to be more sincere in selecting doctors, training its staffs and public contact personnel; developing structured consumer management, effective flowcharting of the overall service operation (also known as blueprinting). Government must take strict action to stop corruption in the hospitals to ensure better medical services. (Anubhab Chakraborty, Fahmid Khan, Md. Tanvir Ahmed, Miadad Rafiq, East West University Students, 32 Mohakhali CIA, Dhaka-1212, Bangladesh.)