No doubt, the rising demand for medical services is not adequately catered to by the public sector hospitals and health service centres. As such, there is no second opinion about the necessity of the private sector coming in a big way to fill in the void. But it needs to be said that the government policy regarding opening of new clinics and labs and control or supervision of the existing ones remains unclear. Against the backdrop of a good number of clinics and labs operating without registration for years together, how judicious the department concerned has been in issuing new licences remains a big question. The case in point is a clinic in Pabna town running for last five years without taking permission from the government. Reports suggest that the owners were close to the power during that period.

The issues that need to be looked into before granting licence to an entrepreneur are: strict maintenance of sanitation standards, proper medical waste disposal, availability of qualified doctors, nurses and paramedics round the clock and having proper stock of screened blood and life saving drugs. But in reality we see a different picture. Stories abound of shoddy clinics, pathological laboratories and blood banks coming up at every nook and cranny and doing brisk business holding service-seeking people ransom to their trickery and deceit. The allegations of a section of doctors and lab owners working in league to make patients pay extra money for unnecessary tests also need to be addressed by the authorities.

In order to stop rampant trade on human misery we urge the authorities in the health ministry to ensure that the clinics and diagnostic centres are given licence only after stringent application of a set of criteria. They must be made to follow all the rules in the book and not take the patients as hostage, which more often than not, many of them do with impunity.