Healthcare in Bangladesh is very important. It is expensive here and there is a massive shortage of facilities in the public sector. However, in the private sector, the patients here are the ones that can afford to pay for their consultations and medicines and the rent required for the hospital bed. Knowing all this, one should also bear in mind that this is a country where the average wage is under the golden British pound.
I arrived at the college and I was greeted by the principle of the college; he is a good friend of my boss at FPAB and therefore, this is how I got the contact and the arrangements for my visit. The principle, himself was a character that really put the fear within me. He has very few facial expressions and he appears at times to be obnoxious to my curiosities of his college. I actually felt quite intimidated by this man, thinking that the next time I open my mouth will be something that offends him. We both had tea together and I told him my schooling history and family history and he then told me his history and how he had been to London to get a PhD from the london school of tropical medicine. For some benign reason, when I tell anyone the name of my medical school, they appear clueless which leads me to believe, is it a shit uni??
The prof then called one of his staff, a young doctor who lectures in pharmacology at the college to give me a guided tour of all the departments at the college itself. They take a lot of pride here, and the facilities they have; one thing that struck me was the amount of science these students do. I swear the stuff the 1st years were being taught was the stuff I learnt in high school, I swear by it.
Then I looked around the anatomy labs and histopathology and microbiology depts, I was feeling thick because at Bart’s we don’t do half the stuff these kids get taught. We have learning landscape but that is nothing to what they have. The big contrast is that the kids in Bangladesh learn, or should I quote, memorise text, pictures and things. They don’t use their minds to work things out or how to apply their knowledge, but they learn things in text books like the way I used to learn my lines whenever I used to be in a school play.
After I had been given a tour of the college, it was now time to be given a tour of the hospital. The hospital is very clean. If you are going to be in a private hospital, cleanliness is the thing that makes one feel that their money is well spent. At the hospital, it can hold a maximum of 300 patients. And unlike an NHS hospital, there were, believe it or not, only 20 patients. On questioning why there are only so few, the answer is, ‘it’s a new hospital and many people think it is too expensive.’ This excuse is exhausted and I felt extremely insulted seeing a hospital not being utilised for its maximum potential. There are people dying at the entrance of government hospitals and this place does nothing to help. It really is sad. The other thing that really pissed me off was the fact there are so many doctors, just lounging around, reading a paper, drinking tea and literally being paid to do nothing. These doctors go abroad to get fancy letters like FRCS, MRCS so they can go back to Bangladesh just so they can be paid 1 lakh per month to sit on their arses. It really is a disgusting sight.
My guide then donated me to another doctor who works in the ITU, there were three registrars for ONE patient!! The patient had a stroke and the registrar was going through the history of the patient and discussing the management plan. I looked at the notes and the drug history for him, and I was shocked. This patient was being treated for symptoms of the stroke. But nobody has even bothered to treat him in preventing a second stroke. Even his drug history was awfully managed. His doctor who was looking after him for his diabetes and high blood pressure was not even applying the modern guidelines in his drug regimen. I then told the registrar it was no surprise he had a stroke. The registrar then defended my accusation of negligence by saying the community doctor must be some crappy village doctor. The truth is, the community doctor is probably some city doctor, making big bucks but not properly looking after his patient. This was disgusting and if this were England, we would have a legitimate legal case here.
I understand when it comes to medicine I am not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but I know my basics and I am now a lot more confident and I feel competent in knowing when a patient is being fucked over by his doctor. Anyhow, needless to say, the registrar and I fell out. The irony was when the ITU consultant came down and I then told him what should be done. I am not even a doctor yet, I have another 4 months left. I was feeling extremely angry. Thank god in the UK we have NICE guidelines.
Afterwards, I was then taken to see the outpatient clinics; here I met an Indian couple. They were the typical Bangalore IT workers employed by a Bangladeshi company. Sad, that Bangladesh doesn’t have people to do their jobs but India does. Anyways, the couple were in because the wife was having her 1st antenatal check. They were very nice people, very chuffed to have a ‘Dr’ from the UK come sit in with them in their consultation. The reason of concern for the lady was that she was anaemic and as they were vegis, they needed to put more iron in their diet. The advice the obstetric consultant was giving was simply ‘take iron tablets’. I then intervened and asked, are you not going to advise anything else? So, I then gave them dietary advice, what to eat, what to avoid, what to do to stay fit and how to recognise the signs of anything bad that hopefully wont happen. I think the consultant was quite offended, because I was doing her job, the only difference I was that I wasn’t expecting a fee. After the consultation, I went along to see the ultrasound being done. I swear in England, ultrasound is not done by doctors. It is a nurse’s job, however, here they employ a doctor to do ultrasound all day!! What a waste of resource. She doesn’t even report the findings, all she does is applies the jelly and gets the image. That’s it!! 5 years of med school so she can take pictures! This was ridiculous, next thing I was expecting to find was a doctor mopping the floor. I mean no disrespect to people who do these jobs, but doctors treat people.
I learnt after this day that the place was really inefficient, and only god know how the hospital survives and is able to afford to pay doctors their wages whilst they have so few patients. I learnt today how an MBBS is wasted and when I think of it, it makes me sick.
i didnt take many pictures, i dont think the places deserved it
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