A SURGEON of Bangladesh Eye Hospital performing surgery on the wrong eye of a child is yet another incident of medical negligence. The surgeon performed surgery on the right eye of the one-and-a-half-year-old child, who was admitted to the hospital with a problem in the left eye. Parents of the patient say that they took their son to the hospital for the problem in the left eye, but the surgeon operated on the right eye. She, however, later operated on the right eye, too. The surgeon, detained on complaint, admitted to her mistakes, explaining the mistake happened as the surgery was done at the eleventh hour of the hospital time when she was exhausted and could not notice it. Such an explanation is unacceptable and the mistake happened because of negligence, which could prove fatal as medical negligence took away lives of many patients and injured many more in many earlier cases of medical negligence and wrong treatment. A number of incidents of medical negligence and wrong treatment that caused death and injury made the headlines in the past.
The issue, after the death of a number of patients because of wrong treatment and medical negligence in the first half of 2024, created an uproar that the High Court asked the health ministry, the Directorate General of Health Services and the Bangladesh Medical and Dental Council, which is responsible for ensuring the conduct of physicians, to take measures to deal with complaints of medical negligence that causes death and compensation claims. This is important in view of the death or injury caused by medical negligence or wrong treatment that have so far largely gone by without much of an action. The Medical and Dental Council, which earned criticism for its inefficiency in preventing medical negligence and for its attempts to save physicians, took punitive action against only 14 physicians in its history and attended to only 2 per cent complaints that it received. Only one physician is reported to have permanently lost the licence. It is said that most complaints of medical negligence finally reach court as civil or criminal cases. But an absence of an adequate legal framework compounds the whole affair, which is said to have given rise to the lack of accountability of medical practitioners. Physicians responsible for wrong treatment or medical negligence are, therefore, rarely punished.
Taking into account the irregularities and negligence in the health sector, the government should provide clear legal directives to resolve the issues and prevent patients鈥� suffering and untimely death from misdiagnosis, surgical error or unnecessary surgery. It should enhance oversight so that medical and administrative operations of hospitals become transparent and accountable. The government should enact a law to prevent such medical negligence.