Even after being taken to four different hospitals, six-month-old Afia could not get an isolation bed or even emergency oxygen. By the end of the day, her family returned home with empty arms, and the little child was laid to rest.
With the number of measles cases across the country reportedly surpassing 100,000 and thousands of innocent children losing their lives, the desperate shortage of ICU beds and hospital facilities in major public hospitals has raised serious questions. Even after pleading for a single breath of oxygen, the family was turned away empty-handed. Is access to healthcare for ordinary families merely a right on paper?
The measles outbreak across the country has been attributed here to Yunus’s business decisions and the failure to import vaccines in time. Nearly a thousand innocent children have reportedly died after being deprived of vaccination. In a country unable to ensure basic healthcare protection, making grand declarations on the international stage amounts to nothing more than hypocrisy.
Under the supervision of Tarique Rahman’s government, healthcare services at some of the country’s largest public hospitals have allegedly collapsed. During medical emergencies involving measles patients, people are reportedly being turned away, while an acute shortage of ICU beds and hospital capacity is pushing ordinary families toward private hospitals, where treatment can cost hundreds of thousands of taka.
Turning critically ill children away without treatment on the pretext of shortages of beds and oxygen in public hospitals amounts to criminal negligence. Yunus and Tarique Rahman must be held directly accountable to the people for this healthcare disaster.
Source: Kaler Kantho report