The Directorate General of Health Services is extending its contract with Sandor Dialysis Services Bangladesh Ltd, which runs the dialysis centre at Chattogram Medical College Hospital (CMCH), by six months. The decision brings relief to 276 poor and middle-income kidney patients who receive subsidised dialysis there for just Tk 621 a session.
The 10-year public-private partnership (PPP) contract, signed in November 2016, expires on 29 November. At a meeting of the PPP Authority on 25 May last year it was decided not to renew it, and under its terms Sandor would remove its machines and staff when it ended. Worried patients held a press conference at Chattogram Press Club on 28 October under the banner of a committee to save the dialysis centre, demanding that the service continue until a new arrangement was in place.
Sandor runs 59 machines at the National Institute of Kidney Diseases in Dhaka and 31 at CMCH. A session costs Tk 3,397; referred poor patients pay Tk 621 and the government covers the rest. A single dialyser costs Tk 1,320. Some freedom fighters and very poor patients are treated free, with up to 650 such places a year, and a patient can have up to eight sessions a month.
CMCH director Brigadier General Mohammad Taslim Uddin said the process of extending the contract by six months has begun to keep treatment going. In that time, he said, the hospital will complete preparations, including buying machines and recruiting staff, to install government-run dialysis machines at the same site as the government has decided. Sandor raises its charges by 5 percent a year and the hospital pays for gas, water and electricity, he said; under government management, patients would pay Tk 416 a session.
Patients at the centre said they would have been in serious trouble if the service had stopped, since besides dialysis they must buy medicines regularly and most need up to eight sessions a month.
If the government centre is not ready within the six months, the same crisis could return, so patients are now watching progress on the new machines and staff. The report is by Dainik Azadi's Zahedul Kabir.
Photo: Shahinur70 / Wikimedia Commons (Public domain)
Source: Dainik Azadi
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