Time has come to say goodbye to another eventful year and welcome a new one. Indeed, people from all around the world, including Bangladesh, want to forget the bitter and horrific experiences they are having in the outgoing year because of Covid-19, a respiratory illness caused by lethal new coronavirus.
Like other developing and developed countries, the fast spread of the pathogen, which was originated in the Chinese city of Wuhan in late 2019, came as a big blow to Bangladesh's highly-centralised and deeply unequal healthcare system, where the poor hardly get proper medicare services.
The fleeing of the majority of doctors and other healthcare professionals from hospitals out of fear of contracting the viral disease not only exposed the vulnerabilities of ordinary patients suffering from various health-related complications, but also highlighted the deep-rooted problems and corruption that have plagued public and private healthcare management. This has been evident since the country reported its first Covid-19 case on March 08.
During the year, the struggling sector witnessed some sensational scandals that shocked the country of around 170 million people. The supply of substandard personal protective equipment (PPE) to the caregivers, the delivery of fake Covid-19 test reports at a high price and providing coronavirus treatment with punishingly expensive charges by a private Covid-dedicated hospital even after being reimbursed from the government.
Several weeks after the scandals came to light, law enforcement agencies managed to arrest the ringleaders of the serious irregularities and brought them under trials.
After facing a torrent of criticism from all quarters following a series of scams over Covid-19 test reports, Professor Dr Abul Kalam Azad had resigned as the director general of the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS) on July 21.
Soon after these scams, the arrest of DGHS driver Abdul Malek, who owns properties worth crores of taka despite being a third-grade employee at the agency was another much-talked-about issue that badly affected the image of the health directorate.
The resignation of Dr Azad did not make any significant change in the management of the health system as the DGHS is continuing to struggle throughout the year.
In terms of managing Covid-19 tests and patients, most of the facilities are still in Dhaka and Chattogram, while the number of caregivers is almost the same.
The issue of supply shortfall and sky-high prices masks, hand sanitisers, oxygen cylinders and other necessary safety materials related to caring infected persons or protecting people from infections hurt citizens, especially the impoverished segment of the society during the year.
Experts said this inequality surfaced as one of the thorniest issues to the public mind, stoking much social resentment, due to the highly-centralised healthcare facilities.
Private hospitals in Dhaka and some in Chattogram were brought under the Covid treatment network, which widened the disparity further, they said.
When contacted, former president of Bangladesh Medical Association (BMA) Professor Dr Rashid-e-Mahbub said the pandemic affected each sector slightly or massively and the health sector is one of the worst-affected in the country.
Although the pandemic puts the healthcare sector under immense pressure, it also gives an opportunity to revive the important area of the economy and make it more efficient to deal with such crises in future, he argued.
Secretary-general of BMA Dr Md Ehteshamul Huq Choudhury said the pandemic made it abundantly clear where the problems lie and where the policymakers should focus their attention.
"We should take 2020 as a learning year for the healthcare sector and work accordingly starting from the New Year for the betterment of the sector," he added.
The country having a sound macroeconomic base is set to observe the last sun set in the struggling 2020 with a hope that the New Year will bring much-needed impetus to the healthcare sector, which will certainly ensure good health of the people from all spectrum of the society.
Meanwhile, the Covid-19 vaccine has been a closely-watched area across the globe, including Bangladesh and some companies have already come up with the antidotes, raising hope for fighting the virus.
But the availability of the much-desired vaccines still remains a big challenge for countries like Bangladesh.
Already, fear has deepened over the equal access to immunisation in a corruption-prone country where the moneyed elite and influential people always leverage their social and political clout and connections.