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subsidy for low-income people so that they, too, can access treatment there, Prof Hamid said.
Aimed at offering world-class healthcare and reducing the need for Bangladeshis to seek treatment abroad, the hospital has five specialised centres: the Cardio and Cerebrovascular Centre, the Hepatobiliary and Liver Transplant Centre, the Mother and Child Healthcare Centre, the Kidney Disease and Urology Centre, and the Accident and Emergency Centre.
The recruitment process during the Awami League tenure was halted over allegations of corruption. An attempt was made to recruit manpower during the interim government, but it failed.
Many highly sophisticated procedures, such as kidney transplants, are supposed to be conducted at the facility, requiring highly skilled personnel.
Getting such manpower is not possible if they are offered salaries under the existing pay structure, said Prof Azad.
“In this given situation, a decision has been taken to amend the existing law,” he said, adding that they have taken the opinion from the law minister.
The cabinet on June 4 approved an amendment to the BMU Act incorporating provisions that allow the university to form for-profit or not-for-profit companies or organisations, as well as acquire shares in such entities.
“This will be a private limited company, with the university holding a 90 percent stake and the government owning the remaining 10 percent,” said a top university official requesting anonymity.
Under the new arrangement, all recruitment will be made on a contractual basis through headhunting, expressions of interest and competitive examinations, instead of permanent government appointments, he said.
The official said the existing university framework was too bureaucratic to run a world-class specialised hospital, as financial and administrative decisions often had to pass through multiple layers of approval.
Asked whether treatment costs would rise, he said: “It is natural that costs will be higher. If you pay a doctor Tk 10 lakh, the income has to come from somewhere.”
Replying to the same question, Prof Azad said the hospital would have to compete with top-tier private hospitals for services and, therefore, service charges would inevitably be higher.
While leading private hospitals charge around Tk 1 lakh a day for ICU services and BMU’s regular hospital charges between Tk 15,000 and Tk 20,000, the Super Specialised Hospital’s ICU cost is likely to be somewhere in the middle: around Tk 50,000 per day.
CLASSIFIED FILES
Trump foe Bolton pleads guilty in case
AFP,
Washington
John Bolton, who served as Donald Trump’s national security advisor before becoming an outspoken critic of the US president, pleaded guilty Friday to one count of retaining classified documents.
Asked by federal Judge Theodore Chuang if he was guilty, the 77-year-old veteran diplomat replied: “I am, Your Honor, and I’m sorry for it.”
Bolton, who faces a maximum prison sentence of five years, must also pay a $2.25 million fine and forfeit his federal pension as part of a plea agreement, the Department of Justice said.
Sentencing was set for October 28.
“As Mr Bolton admitted, he shared more than 1,000 pages of information about his day-to-day activities as the National Security Advisor, including information related to national defense with two individuals who neither had the security clearances nor the need to know that information,” prosecutor Kelly Hayes said after the hearing.
“Remarkably, he did so using his personal email account and non-government messaging applications,” she said of his actions from April 2018 and September 2019.
Bolton, one of several Trump foes to be hit with criminal charges since the Republican president returned to the White House, was indicted in October on 18 counts of transmitting and retaining top secret national defense information.
The two individuals have not been identified, but Bolton is believed to have shared the information with his wife and daughter.
The material was allegedly later used in a book that Bolton wrote, “The Room Where It Happened,” that was highly critical of the Trump administration.
Bolton, who served as Trump’s national security advisor during his first term, frequently appears on television news shows and in print to condemn the man he has called “unfit to be president.”
Trump lashed out at Bolton on Friday night in a Truth Social post after his former aide pleaded guilty, calling him a “very dumb, unbalanced, and unskilled former representative of the United States of America.”
“Hopefully, he will be dealt with harshly!” Trump wrote.
Amplifying the impact of Bolton’s actions, his personal email was hacked by an Iranian-linked actor after he left office in September 2019, authorities said.
“He reported that hack to law enforcement but did not tell the agents or anyone else in the US government that the account contained national defense information,” the Department of Justice said.
Trump has repeatedly criticized his former aide and withdrew his security detail shortly after returning to office in January of last year.
The Justice Department has sought to bring cases against other prominent Trump critics, including New York Attorney General Letitia James and former FBI director James Comey.
Comey was indicted in April for allegedly threatening Trump’s life, five months after a previous case against the ex-FBI chief was thrown out.
The indictment by a grand jury in North Carolina stems from an Instagram post Comey made that showed the numbers “86 47” spelled out in seashells on a beach.
Trump has alleged that “86” was slang for kill and “47” was a reference to his being the 47th president.
The case against James, which has since been dismissed, centered on an allegedly falsified mortgage application.
Unlike the James and Comey cases, however, the investigation into Bolton’s alleged mishandling of classified material began during the administration of Joe Biden.