Fake diagnostic centres appear to have joined a mad race to demonstrate the level of their unassailability in the country. The educated and conscious sections of people have long been aware of this scourge. But, stunningly, they themselves are often tricked into the skilfully spread trap --- in both big and small cities and obscure towns. It's the simple and little educated people, under medical emergencies, who are normally lured by the phony private pathological centres. Earlier, their vile activities were carried out stealthily. Nowadays, with the ubiquitous presence and the mushrooming of these labs across the country, they have emerged as a great threat to public health. Due to the occasional drives by different monitoring and law enforcement agencies in big cities, these fraudulent diagnostic centres have found the smaller towns as their ideal business points. However, their sly activities in the capital's dingy areas have not stopped.
A recent FE report on the activities of these dubiously operating diagnostic centres reveals what actually happen inside them. As the report finds, the whole function of these centres is based on blatant deception of the pathological test seekers. That these centres do not have even the preliminary testing equipment has long been suspected. As has been elaborated in the report, these diagnostic labs collect pathological samples with 'utmost care'. But none of them goes to any testing desks. Instead, they are allegedly thrown into trash-filled buckets. Young medics call the tests done in these labs 'bucket tests'. In exchange for whimsically fixed fees, what the patients get are sham test results, with counterfeit signatures of noted pathologists. Many of these are prepared earlier, and supplied on demand. At times, they use blank pages of the centre's pad. The texts of the test results are then copied from those given to other persons.
The extent to which these tests help a patient get the right treatment is anybody's guess. Doctors with scruple continue to caution people about these sham tests. It's because fake tests necessitate the patients' visits to reliable labs again, leading to loss of money and crucial time. Amid constant offers of 'cheap and quick service' made by the agents of different diagnostic outlets, at times inside hospitals, patients finally get hooked. The wise words of the expert doctors hardly work on them.
Most of these centres lack reagents and basic testing equipment. That a pathological laboratory can be made to operate without the all-important reagents and skilled technicians defies credulity. But it's occurring in Bangladesh. Bluntly speaking, things couldn't have come to this pass without nexuses between corrupt physicians and the criminally-disposed diagnostic centres. In short, these fake labs loom like an ominous shadow over the country's health sector. What appears as a highly upsetting development is the authorities' occasional feigning ignorance about the presence of this scourge. Denials like this stem from the very system, the clumsy nature of which is now an open secret. That these private diagnostic outlets are sapping the health sector of its strength is a stark reality. There are other culprits too. This deterioration process ought to be dealt with firmly. In doing so, other unsavoury realities in the sector also deserve to be brought into focus.