‘Hospitals flouting tobacco law’

Dhaka’s big hospitals are violating the tobacco control law, anti-tobacco groups have said citing their survey.

Senior Correspondentbdnews24.com
Published : 16 April 2014, 04:40 PM
Updated : 16 April 2014, 05:21 PM

Dhaka Ahsania Mission (DAM), Environment Council (EC) Bangladesh, National Heart Foundation Hospital, Anti Tobacco Women Alliance, and Progga said at a joint press conference on Wednesday that the capital’s six big hospitals had shown every sign of “non-compliance”.

“The ghost is within,” said Iqbal Masud, a DAM assistant director. “Hospitals are under the same health ministry that formulated the law”.

The anti-tobacco groups have based their charges on the findings of two surveys done in the February and March.

The hospitals they looked into were BIRDEM, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University Hospital (BSMMU), National Institute of Traumatology and Orthopaedic Rehabilitation (NITOR) Hospital, Sarkari Karmachari Hospital, Shaheed Suhrawardi Medical College Hospital, and Dhaka Shishu (Children) Hospital.

Masud said the authorities had failed to fix “tobacco-free” signs prominently in the hospitals and could not stop the sale of tobacco products within their premises.

The amended law in 2013 banned every form of tobacco advertisements and directed the installation of alerts at public places driving home tobacco’s harmful effects.

Masud said they were appalled to find people smoking even inside emergency departments.

“Hospitals are careless,” he said, picking it as the reason for hospitals still not being smoke-free.

He said they first visited the hospitals in February and again in March to look for possible improvements.

“Our aim is to draw the health ministry’s attention to the fact that hospitals are not smoke-free,” he said.

A hospital director, however, said they had fixed anti-tobacco sign across the complex.

“It’s their (surveyors) own view,” claimed Shaheed Suhrawardi Medical College Hospital Director Prof Mujibur Rahman.