A BBC report on May 15 made the disclosure that 60 coronavirus patients have fled various hospitals in the past weeks and police are trying to trace them around the country. It is quite unthinkable and one can only resort to such unusual risk in an unusual situation. Now it is known that the number is around 66.
Patients were admitted to the hospitals for treatment to get cure. There is no doubt only a bigger risk to their lives may have forced them to flee. Everyone applied his best consideration individually to take such decisions to suggest a desperate situation from each one’s point of view. It showed hospitals are no more a place for cure for patients. The question is how much incompetence a civilised nation can tolerate.
Patients have fled but the grave risk of an awful lack of confidence in the treatment which they are supposed to get from hospitals will remain in the minds of others who are suffering. They have escaped knowing that without treatment their death is inevitable. They must be quickly traced and returned to isolation while we must insist that a proper investigation be held on the treatment process in those hospitals. May be the hospitals will say the government forced to take corona patients though they were not prepared.
The report said 44 patients fled from four hospitals in the capital and the Dhaka Medical College Hospital (DMCH) reported the largest number of those who slipped out unnoticed. Other patients fled from hospitals in other cities.
The allegation is common that hospitals treating corona patients are very poorly equipped and badly managed. The doctors and nurses are not feeling safe. Many of the doctors and nurses gave their lives.
The allegation is common that hospitals treating corona patients are very poorly equipped and badly managed. The doctors and nurses are not feeling safe. Many of the doctors and nurses gave their lives.
If the government is a one-man show, as is proudly claimed by all the ministers, then that one person has to bear all the blame for failure also.
The shames for fleeing corona patients from hospitals lies with the health ministry for not preparing the hospitals with facilities for treatment. One of the patients who fled told the BBC about the unhygienic condition of the hospital and its unpreparedness for treatment which made him lose confidence in the medical care available.
Instead of relying on police action to arrest them they must be traced for saving others. The Ministry of Health, more particularly the minister himself should be held accountable. We are truly ashamed that never before we experienced such incompetent ministers. They have ruined the whole governance system carelessly.
Patients blame that they pass most of their time in hospital beds unattended. There is not enough oxygen supply, surgical masks and such other protective gears. In many cases patients have to bring oxygen cylinders for respiratory support. The worst thing is hospital management in many hospitals do not care to maintain cleanliness.
We have ministers who are still threatening police action for spreading rumours. We hope they will have this much sense to realise that nothing could succeed in damaging the image of the government so badly than the shameful incident of patients fleeing hospitals who are afflicted by the deadly virus for fear that they would not get treatment. In other words they preferred to die outside rather than to die inside hospitals which are so dirty and so unprepared.
But the government may yet harass the unhappy patients by police action.
