WHETHER the death of four patients at the intensive care unit of the Dhaka Medical College Hospital (DMCH) on Friday was caused by or coincided with the malfunction in the centralised oxyg’en supply system can be belaboured for hours, or even days, together. In fact, the debate is already on. While the relatives of the deceased see a correlation, the on-duty doctors refuse, and obviously so, to draw such a conclusion. However, what is beyond contention is that the six-hour disruption could have taken a heavier toll of human lives. Fortunately, it didn’t, by virtue of either the hospital's back-up system or sheer luck.

Nevertheless, the temporary collapse of the oxygen supply network certainly calls for intense brain-storming by the high-ups at the DMCH as well as the BOC, which is responsible for supplying oxygen at the hospital. After all, under no circumstances, such a glitch should go unaddressed, especially when it involves an extremely sensitive system.

The DMCH, like other public healthcare establishments in the country, is reported, by leading news dailies, to have been plagued by multifarious problems related to mainly inadequate logistic support and mismanagement. This paper has also very recently revealed the poor conditions of its operation theatres, inadequate supply of medicine, so on and so forth. Now comes this to underline our apprehension that the hospital needs to be shored up sooner than later lest there should be a failure of even a greater magnitude. Admittedly, mishaps such as this actually cause irreparable damage to the credibility of any medicare institution.

Such knee-jerk reaction as forming a probe committee upon occurrence of failure of any degree, as we have seen over and over again, seldom brings any change for the better. More often than not, it has turned into an exercise in futility. It is about time the high-ups took a comprehensive view of the problems plaguing the country's healthcare system and devised a redressal accordingly.