Graft case ‘bars’ repairing 16 damaged Faridpur ventilators

All of the 16 ventilators available in Faridpur district are damaged, said Faridpur unit president of Bangladesh Medical Association (BMA) ASM Zahangir Chowdhury.

All of those life-saving machines for critically ill patients are installed in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) of Faridpur Medical College Hospital. There are no other ventilators in any government and private hospital in the district, he added.

Faridpur Medical College Hospital director Md Saifur Rahman said those 16 ventilators were brought for the 16-bed ICU facility of the hospital around five years ago. But those could not be initiated due to lack of manpower.

Amid the deadly coronavirus pandemic, they recently checked all those machines and found them to be damaged, he said.

Meanwhile, Faridpur general hospital’s residential physician Ganesh Kumar Agarwala said the 115-bed hospital does not have any ventilator.

Faridpur civil surgeon Siddikur Rahman said they held a meeting at the deputy commissioner’s conference room on Monday afternoon and discussed repairing the ventilators.

However, they questioned any initiative to repair those since a lawsuit, filed by the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) about alleged corruption in buying the hospital’s ICU equipment, is underway.

Speaking to Prothom Alo, ACC’s Faridpur office deputy director Abul Kalam Azad said the case was filed on charges of attempts to embezzle Tk 100 million from the state exchequer in the name of buying medical equipment. It is not that the money was embezzled.

Since the country is going through a crisis, I don’t think it would legally be a fault if the medical college hospital authorities take initiatives to repair the equipment. Many things could be done for the greater interest of the nation, he added.