Dhaka Dental College Hospital has labs, but it runs no tests

“Why wouldn’t a public hospital have arrangements for tests?” asks Sumaiya Islam, fuming.

The student came to Dhaka Dental College Hospital in Mirpur 14 for treatment, but none of the tests prescribed by the doctor were available there.

“The tests are cheaper here. The quality of tests is good as well. But they do not have [the right] provisions,” said Sumaiya, who lives in Mirpur’s Monipur.

Noor Jahan from Manikdi was equally exasperated. She has been receiving treatment for dental erosion for nearly six months and lost a tooth in the process.

Her doctors prescribed several tests but she could not get any of them done in the hospital.

One of the tests Noor Jahan needed to undergo, prescribed by a doctor at the hospital on May 11, was Orthopantomogram or OPG. But she found out at the counter that the hospital did not conduct any such test.

So she went to a private diagnostic centre nearby to get the test done.

But bdnews24.com took a deeper look into the question of why these tests are unavailable at the government hospital. It was apparent that the radiology and imaging division did not have X-ray films as well as reagents needed to carry out the tests for over six months.

In the outpatient department, the doctors were prescribing different tests and the patients were leaving the hospital to get those done from private diagnostic centres at a prohibitive rate.

In fact, touts of diagnostic centres wait outside the main gate of the hospital to lead the patients to the private facilities.

But patients would have had to spend much less while saving some valuable time if the hospital had the correct provisions.

The staff at Dhaka Dental College Hospital said the radiology and imaging department had provisions for 37 types of tests, with prices ranging from Tk 50 to TK 4,000. But now they can do just one of these, called periapical view, while all the other tests remained suspended.

The clinical and pathology department did 69 tests - the cheapest cost Tk 20 and the most expensive was Tk 450.

Patients admitted to the hospital have to go through some tests at the pathology department as protocol before any surgery is done. The hospital carries out more than 50 surgeries every day.

Complete Blood Count or CBC and some urine tests are among the leading tests there, but the machines for these tests are broken at the moment.

With nothing to do all day, two medical officers and other staff of the pathology department were lazing around at the hospital.

Professor Borhan Uddin Howlader, the hospital director, said: “Films and reagents are bought through tenders. The previous director did not call a tender before he retired. That is what has caused this problem.”

“Government supplies cannot be purchased at will. So I’ve begun the process by calling a tender. It is in progress.”

The hospital had just one CT Scan machine and it was moved to a COVID-19 hospital in Mohakhali.

Borhan Uddin claimed they were performing some MRI tests, but radiology and imaging department staffers said the MRI machine was broken and tests were out of the question until a new one was set up.

Dr Md Zahidur Rahman, former director of the hospital who retired in January, told bdnews24.com reagents for the pathology department are hard to come by. So they cannot always be bought.

“A lot of hard work is needed to bring in supplies. During my four and half years, I was able to make three purchases with the ministry’s permission. I couldn’t do any more. When I did buy, things ran smoothly. How am I supposed to provide when I didn’t get them?”

“I retired at a time when I could not make the purchase.”

“Audit would have become an issue if I had made the purchase at that time. Who would check my audit if I’m not here? If I don’t see to it, if the right things are not said, auditors would not have a proper understanding. There would be a misunderstanding and they would raise objections,” he explained.