Bangladesh plans to recruit 5,000 medical technologists to expand COVID-19 testing

The government is going to appoint 5,000 medical technologists 'soon', Health Minister Zahid Malik has said as healthcare experts say coronavirus testing has been hamstrung by a shortage of the laboratory professionals.

Senior Correspondentbdnews24.com
Published : 17 May 2020, 03:32 PM
Updated : 17 May 2020, 05:11 PM

As many as 2,000 doctors and 5,000 nurses were recently appointed at 10 days' notice, the minister said at the inauguration of a temporary COVID-19 hospital in Dhaka’s International Convention City Bashundhara on Sunday.

“The process has begun to appoint at least 5,000 medical technologists to strengthen the health care system. They will be recruited very soon,” he added.

As the coronavirus pandemic rages on across the world, public health experts have been quick to stress the importance of adequate testing for the disease in shaping a country's containment strategy.

In Bangladesh, however, the efforts to test samples for potential COVID-19 cases have been handicapped by a marked shortage of medical technologists.

The technologists, on the other hand, claim they were overburdened by the work they have in hand due to a manpower shortage.

As a result, Bangladesh is still lagging behind its neighbouring countries in terms of sample testing.

According to the World Health Organization's directives, in the battle against the coronavirus, for every doctor, there should at least be three nurses and five medical technologists. But the scenario in Bangladesh does not match up to the WHO standard.

Before the recent appointment of doctors and nurses, the number of doctors under the Directorate General of Health Services was 25,615, according to government data. The WHO standard would require technologists to take up 128,075 posts in the national healthcare system.

But the DGHS has only allocated 7,920 posts for medical technologists with only 5,184 currently on its roster, equating to a ratio of 0.32 medical technologists for every 10,000 people in Bangladesh.

A total of 1,417 lab technologists, who collect samples and conduct tests, are currently working against 2,182 available positions.