Bangladesh’s COVID-19 testing criticised
Specialists state that the administration’s way to deal with testing and observation, including charging patients an expense, is hampering the reaction. Sophie Cousins reports.
General wellbeing specialists in Bangladesh have communicated worry about the administration’s choice to charge individuals for COVID-19 tests in the midst of a sharp decrease in the quantity of tests being finished. In late June, the administration chose to charge 200 taka (£1·80) for testing done at government offices and 500 taka (£4·50) for tests gathered from home to “evade pointless tests”. The private area charges 3500 taka (£32) per test. Very nearly one of every four Bangladeshis live beneath the public neediness line.
Since the choice, testing rates have tumbled to around 0·8 tests per 1000 individuals for each day, with a low of simply 0·06 tests per 1000 individuals in August. Bangladesh is overseeing on normal somewhere in the range of 12 000 and 15 000 tests every day for a populace of 168 million, and has recorded practically 275 000 affirmed cases and in excess of 3600 passings.
Shamim Talukder, head of Eminence, a Bangladeshi general wellbeing research association, disclosed to The Lancet that the pandemic had uncovered the nation’s “exploitative” medical services framework. “From the earliest starting point of the pandemic, the administration needed to control the COVID-19 testing framework”, he said. “Toward the starting it didn’t permit the private area to do the tests and now they’ve applied a charge for testing in the public area, which just implies that the poor are barred.”
Talukder disclosed to The Lancet that he had visited various burial grounds across Dhaka, where cemetery administrators had revealed to him the passing rate from COVID-19 was “multiple times higher” than the recorded figure was. Numerous individuals, he stated, had passed on of COVID-19 however had not been tried, or had kicked the bucket before they had gotten their test outcomes.
Previous Director of Bangladesh’s Institute of Epidemiology, Disease Control and Research, Mahmudur Rahman, censured the administration’s choice. “Charging individuals for tests is truly making issues; it is making boundaries, particularly for poor people”, he said. “During the pandemic, individuals don’t have work, they don’t have cash, they’re at an enormous disadvantage…Governments ought not charge anybody for testing.”
Different obstructions to testing, Rahman stated, incorporate the low trust individuals had in the medical services framework. “We’ve had testing tricks here. There is an absence of trust in the medical services framework, so individuals would prefer not to get tried in light of the fact that they would prefer not to get an outcome they don’t trust”, he said. “Another issue is the deferral in getting the outcomes — once in a while it takes seven days, different occasions it simply doesn’t come. In the event that somebody needs an outcome quickly, why trouble? They simply remain at home all things considered.”
In mid-July a Bangladesh emergency clinic proprietor was captured over charges he gave a large number of phony negative COVID-19 test outcomes, further focusing a light on the nation’s unregulated private area. Rahman required the nation to desperately set up a sentinel observation framework, as in 2009 in light of the H1N1 flu pandemic, which would empower a superior comprehension of the infection at the network level to see where the disease was moving and to design likewise. “Such a reconnaissance is pivotal. In the event that individuals are not seeking testing, at that point there must be an instrument set up so we can comprehend the circumstance of our nation.”
A specialist in Dhaka, who addressed The Lancet on the state of obscurity, dreaded what was coming. “In a nation of in excess of 165 million, that is playing out a limit of 15 000 tests every day, it isn’t anything and generally those tests are simply being done in Dhaka itself”, he said. “This plague will remain for a significant long time. What I’m anxious about is the point at which the Bangladeshi winter shows up. Individuals are apprehensive.”
Talukder said that the pandemic had additionally uncovered the nation’s chronic infirmity care framework, which spends only 0·69% of the nation’s GDP on wellbeing, making Bangladesh perhaps the most reduced high-roller on wellbeing worldwide. Additionally, 66% of wellbeing consumption is using cash on hand and borne by family units, huge numbers of whom are impelled into destitution by calamitous medical care costs.
Talukder required a total rebuilding of the medical services framework, which would incorporate prohibiting specialists who work in the public area from enhancing their pay with private practice, which has prompted the disregard of patients in open offices, among different intercessions. “The vast majority don’t care to go to the medical clinic because of the low quality of administrations and they would prefer not to go to the private area due to the excessive cost”, he said.
With Bangladesh in the hold of the storm season and the dengue season drawing closer, each of the three specialists communicated worry about COVID-19 proceeding to spread unchecked all through the nation. They expected that the most noticeably awful was at this point to come. “The administration’s need is the economy, [but] COVID-19 will keep on spreading into country territories and more individuals will kick the bucket”, Talukder said.
