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Patients' Sufferings Know no Bound

DMCH finds huge food supply graft

Shaheen Mollah uMi Alpha Arzu
Indoor patients at Dhaka Medical College Hospital (DMCH) are getting apparently improved diet after being provided with rotten food for years thanks to rampant irregularities by the authorities and food suppliers.
DMCH Director Brig Gen Bazle Quader admitted the ill-practices that existed at the country's largest public hospital for long.
"We found huge corruption including supplying underweight, rotten and substandard food, which hampers the patients' nutritional status," he told The Daily Star yesterday.
"During a surprise visit at the kitchen I found those irregularities, though the government specifically instructed the suppliers about weight, nutritional measurements and volume of the food items."
The administration no longer takes food items that falls short of standard weight, height and nutrition, he added.
Sources from different wards, units and even patients and their attendants admitted that food standard improved in the past three days.
Rahima Begum, 20, a patient at Female Medicine Ward-21, said, I came here on June 2 with kidney complications. 1 was upset getting substandard food like coarse rice, small piece of fish or meat as those were not sufficient for me.
"But surprisingly, I found quality food in the last three days.”
Dr Bilkis Begum, consultant of Gynaecology of One-Stop Crisis Centre (OCC), said, "The patients now look happy with the food quality. Previously, they could not eat the supplied substandard food."
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According to the hospital chart, a patient gets eight slices of bread with one boiled egg, one banana, 30 grams of sugar and two ounce of jelly at breakfast, 225gm rice, 95gm fish or meat, 45gm pulse, 200gm vegetables and a banana at lunch, and 225gm rice, two eggs, 40gm pulse, 200gm vegetables and a banana at dinner.
The cost of a day's meal should be Tk 75 as per the government directives.
Patients say less than 150gm coarse rice, three or four pieces of bread, less than 35gm fish or meat, substandard jelly and very small and green bananas were supplied.
As per the rule patients should get mutton once a week, but sources say it was not provided in last one year.
Employees working at । DMCH kitchen say contrac-’ tors supply food items very less than tne actual demana, but i ,ey have to manage with that.
Speaking anonymously, a former contractor said, "We have to bribe the authorities, class three and four employees, officials of the account section and the dietitian to get the order and our bills."
"After all those sectional bribes, we had to supply less than the actual weight and also substandard food," added the former contactor, who no longer supplies food after suffering huge loss.
On last Thursday the new DMCH director visited the hospital kitchen and caught red-handed contractor Tota Mia for supplying 98kg decomposed pungash fish instead of205kg katai.
He caught another supplier Md Babul with 230kg coarse rice he brought instead of ^y^kg medium quality fine nee.
Though the authorities prepare meal for 2,000 to 2,300 indoor patients, a large num-
ber of them could not eat the food, say hospital sources.
The deputy director (DD) of the hospital is responsible to ensure nutritional diet fof the patients, but they never do anything, sources allege.
Contacted, DD Dr Qazi Enamul Kabir claimed, "The authorities always provide quality and nutntious food. Earlier we provided two smaller pieces of fish or meat. Now we provide one piece of fish which is bigger."
Earlier, mobile courts found rotten and expired food and adulterated milk at the kitchen. Besides, they also found a gravely unhygienic environment at the DMCH canteen.
According to a survey report of Transparency International Bangladesh in October 2006, food items worth Tk 31,680 were wasted a day as patients could not eat those.
The situation remained unchanged until recently as the authorities always kept a blind eye to all sorts of anomalies.