Directorate General of Health Services on Wednesday for the first time approved three posh private hospitals to test COVID-19, but it declined to disclose the fees.
DGHS additional director general Nasima Sultana said this on the daily online bulletin on COVID-19 situation that three private hospitals– Evercare Hospital, formerly known as Apollo Hospital, Square Hospital and United Hospital– had approved to test COVID-19 patients. Although she said that they would test at government’s fixed rate, she skipped the exact amount during the bulletin.
Nasima told New Age that they would not disclose the fees, but insisted that they had fixed it.
‘I’ve skipped the amount of fees willingly during the bulletin,’ she said.
‘We’ll not disclose the fees,’ Nasima Sultana said, adding, ‘Ask them, the private hospitals, about the fees.’
When asked about the reasons for not disclosing the amount, despite DGHS being the regulatory authority and for the public interest to keep people aware about the actual test fees, she did not give any direct answer.
‘We’ve fixed the fees rationally, considering the price of testing kits and establishment cost,’ she said. Nasima insisted that the amount would not be disclosed.
Health rights campaigner Rashid-e-Mahbub expressed surprise over the government decision of hiding the fees for COVID-19 tests by the private hospitals.
In a reaction to New Age, he said that it was completely a dubious decision made by the DGHS not to disclose the test fees.
‘The COVID-19 tests might be privatised for the interest of public health, but the fees must be fixed and made public so that they are not overcharged,’ said Rashid, also former president of Bangladesh Medical Association.
Last year, the DGHS fixed the fees of dengue tests as the country witnessed unprecedented outbreak of dengue and the private hospitals were cashing in on the situation.
Rashid said that all the tests done by the private hospitals should be fixed and strictly monitored by the DGHS whether their directives were followed.
Bangladesh so far tested 59,701 people for COVID-19 since January 21, 2020, after the novel coronavirus emerged in China.
The government delayed to decentralise the testing facilities and kept the option at the Institute of Epidemiology, Disease Control and Research only until the last week of March.
Despite the World Health Organization recommendation of widespread tests to detect and isolate COVID-19 patients, the government continued testing low number of people while the infections spread to across the country unknowingly.
Now 23 labs are testing COVID-19 samples, most of them in the capital.
