CU Medical Centre limps

Chittagong University Medical Centre. PHOTO: STAR

The Centre, established about four decades ago, was supposed to render all necessary healthcare services to them. But it has failed so far to live up to the expectation.

It runs with 11 doctors and 40 other staffs, including three officers but lacks any specialist. They often face trouble to cope with the number of both outdoor and indoor patients.

As a result, the students and other campus dwellers are compelled to consult the specialists in different city clinics or doctors' chambers, which the poor students can't afford.

The centre has only 10 beds for the patients.

The university authorities seemed to have no headache in this regard, said students.

The CU authorities allocate Tk 3 lakh to purchase medicines for the centre after four months, sources said. "The amount is too little and inadequate to buy medicines," they said.

"We do not get all necessary medicines from the centre, especially the costlier ones, for poor allocation by the authorities. As a result, we have no choice but to buy those expensive medicines from outside the centre," Mohammed Hasan, a student of Public Administration, said.

Acting Chief Medical Officer Dr Mohammed Tofazzal Hossain said the insufficient allocation has tied their hands to buy necessary medicines as well as render better healthcare services to the patients.

The centre can only test blood and urine here due to lack of pathological facilities. The lone X-ray machine remains inoperative since its procurement over a decade ago for lack of space and a technician, sources said.

Besides, doctors are very irregular to their duties and reportedly keen to practise outside the centre. "Most of them have shares of dispensaries or clinics in the port city or Hathazari upazila areas," sources added.

The centre has four ambulances and seven drivers, which are being used by a section of influential teachers for their personal purposes such as shopping, sources said. The teachers bother little to the emergency needs of the centre, sources added.

The first floor of the two-storied medical centre has long been used as lecture rooms for the students of law and micro-biology departments with the permission of the university authorities,

sources said.

Meanwhile, Vice Chancellor Professor AJM Nuruddin Chowdhury said the quarterly allocation for buying medicines is sufficient and has no plan to increase it.

On usage of centre ambulances for personal affairs, he said the teachers can use those with prior permission from the authorities.

He said the authorities have no immediate plan to shift the lecture rooms of the law and micro-biology departments from the medical centre.