THE incidence of cancer, heart diseases and kidney ailments has increased sharply in recent years but many of the patients find the high costs of treatment simply unaffordable. The costly treatment of these diseases forces the ordinary people to go to public hospitals where proper arrangements, including ICU facilities are poor in quality and quantity that cost many lives every day. Being forwarded by physicians, patients are denied admission due to scarcity of beds. Only seven government general hospitals have ICU facilities with 80 beds in all. The authorities concerned must adorn the public hospitals with state-of-the-art life saving gear — ICU and diagnosis equipment that would lessen the cost.
As per Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics the incidence of heart diseases, cancer and arthritis has phenomenally increased since 2000. Heart diseases rose to 6.59 per thousand in 2014 from 1.6 in 2000. The per capita health expenditure increased to $27 in 2012 from $16 in 2007. The government’s share in per capita health expenditure has meanwhile declined to 23 percent in past five years ending in 2012. As a result individual citizens are compelled to bear more expenditure to get access to treatments, reports compiled by the government’s Health Economics Unit shows. Now, individual citizens have to bear over 63 percent of their healthcare expenses, which is one of the highest in South Asia.
In Dhaka Medical College Hospital around 30 patients sought ICU services in every three-day and only few get the chance. Last month, 406 people tried but only 74 could be accommodated to the ICU unit. Patients with neurological and respiratory problems and life-threatening illnesses and injuries need ICU service as they require constant support of special equipment and medications. As per the international standards, in a hospital the ratio between the total number of beds and the beds in its ICU should be 20:1. The number of beds at the ICU is too insufficient against the demand in our hospitals.
ICU services in private hospitals are too costly as they charge between Tk 15,000 and Tk 100,000 a day. A middle-income family has to sell property to pay the bills. Patients become compelled to get admission in private hospitals as the scarcity of ICUs at government hospitals is acute. It is true that the government hospitals provide ICU services at a nominal cost but they have not inadequate seats because as the authorities say, such unit is very expensive and difficult to maintain and it requires involvement of a lot of people.
In our view access to treatment is a basic human right and the government must set up more ICU as it can bear the cost in public hospitals. It is also essential to keep the treatment cost low for common people to help them in their efforts to save their life.
