JUST two days after the unfortunate case of a three-year-old succumbing to alleged wrong treatment in a private hospital in Chittagong, two more patients died in separate hospitals in the city. In both cases, bereaved families accused the medical staff, especially attending doctors, of unsafe or negligent medical care. Sadly, the country’s healthcare sector, both private and public, are being accused of irregularities with many hospitals suffering from understaffmg, corruption, negligence, and lack of basic hygiene resulting in a sizeable number of preventable deaths every year.

Add to that the fact that often hospitals reportedly use medicines past their expiry dates to treat patients. During a recent inspection drive by security officials, a prominent private hospital in the capital was found to be using expired re-agents (identification chemicals) and other medical materials.

The situation is further aggravated by the absence of a proper monitoring and feedback evaluation mechanism. Often families are left in the dark about the basis for a certain surgical procedure being prescribed or ongoing developments of a treatment. They have no way of being certain that their patients will get the best treatment they deserve or holding the medical staff accountable in case of an unwanted occurrence. Who will they go to when something like this happens? What price can be there for a life cut rudely short by greed and negligence?

The government should take these issues into consideration and take necessary steps to ensure patients' safety. A lot of the problems existing in our health sector would be gone if a proper monitoring and evaluation system supervised by an independent commission, as suggested by Transparency International Bangladesh, was put in place.