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SSMCH GYNECOLOGY DEPT

Brokers prey on patients

CITY CORRESPONDENT
Patients and attendants, mostly poor, coming to the gynecology and obstetrics department of Sir Salimullah Medical College Hospital (SSMCH) fall into the hands of brokers, who exploit them in the name of helping them buy medicines and get admitted to the hospital.
They also lure them to private diagnostic centres for pathological tests at high costs.
Anytime of the day, these brokers can be found loitering around the hospital's outpatient centre and especially at the gynecology department.
"I am not an employee here, but I serve the doctors and staff by bringing them tea," said a middleaged lady at the outpatient department who refused to give her name. However, hospital staffs said her main job is to take patients to nearby clinics for tests.
If a patient at the outpatient department is asked to get pathological tests done, the brokers make them believe that the nearby clinics are the better
ones to do it. For bringing each patient, they get a certain amount in commission from the clinics.
The poor and those from outside Dhaka are the main targets of the brokers.
"The brokers can easily confuse patients and convince them because there is no written direction anywhere for the patients to follow. They fail to understand what to do and where to go and finally get ensnared by the brokers," said a fifth year student of the medical college.
About 30 patients get admitted to the gynecology and obstetrics department of the hospital. Most of them have to pay Tk 50 to the gatekeeper to enter the department on the fifth floor. Patients also complain that sometimes the lift operators refuse to let them use the facility without payment.
Around ten brokers are always seen loitering around the department. The moment the doctors hand prescriptions to patients, they grab it on the pretext of helping them. But the patients often have to pay more to buy medicines because of underhand
dealings between the drug stores and the brokers.
"For a normal child birth, a patient needs medicines worth between Tk 500 and Tk 900. But they have to pay at least Tk 1,500 if a broker arranges it," said an intern doctor working in the department. Moreover, the drug stores often push low quality medicines of unknown brands for more profit.
Sources said the department has low supply of drugs and cannot afford to give them to all patients. The department facilities are in a shabby state with a single labour room and an operation theatre for Caesarian sections. It can accommodate 42 patients in the postnatal ward but usually patients outnumber the capacity. There are ten beds in the eclampsia ward and 27 beds in the antenatal ward.
Male attendants freely enter the wards to the embarrassment of the patients. "There is no privacy here," said Nasima Banu, attendant of a patient in the postnatal ward. Nobody is barred from entering the labour room and caesarian operations are done in
an open room.
Attendants complained that patients are mostly treated by the interns and none of the seniors visit them. "The uterus of a patient prolapsed after delivery a few days ago," an attendant complained, adding that nobody bothered about the maltreatment.
Vice-principal Sharfuzzaman strongly denied leaving patients to the hands of interns. "We have a large number of mid-level and honorary doctors and interns do not even get a chance to work," he said. He refused to comment on brokers. "The director of the hospital is the right person to talk about it," he said.
Abul Khair Bhuiyan, director of the SSMCH, said the authorities are trying their best to get the brokers arrested. "Being the director of the hospital, I myself went to the outpatient department and caught a broker of a clinic," he said. However, he said it is hard to ward off the brokers. "They would stay away for a few days whenever we crack down on them and then they appear," he added.