Tk 231cr could be saved if third party not involved

• Legal procedure not followed in purchasing jabs

• Covid treatment costs Tk 5 lakh per patient

• Middle class has been forced to seek treatment at pvt hospitals

Dragging some serious allegations against the government over nationwide Covid-19 vaccination, Transparency International Bangladesh (TIB) on Tuesday alleged that the ongoing vaccine crisis in Bangladesh has been created as the government has benefitted a third-party by assigning it for collecting vaccines which they could have done directly.

TIB Executive Director Dr Iftekharuzzaman said that the government could have saved Tk 231 crore if it collected vaccines directly from the Serum Institute of India. In case of purchasing vaccines, the legal procedure has not been followed. And in light of the seven parameters of good governance, he described mismanagement in controlling Covid-19 transmission and vaccination activities.

The executive director pressed the allegation while speaking at a virtual event on “Tackling Coronavirus Crisis: Good Governance Challenge in Covid-19 Vaccine Management” which was conducted following both qualitative and quantitative methods and by analysing data in light of different indicators of good governance. 

Dr Iftekharuzzaman said, the government depended on a single source for it through a third party on political considerations, bowing down to the pressure of a business quarter. “As a result, there is still no success in procuring vaccines despite the government trying different sources,” he said.

The TIB Executive director also said the government is much more active in controlling the flow of information than in controlling corruption in the country.

“The government has been trying to control the disclosure of information since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic and this trend has strengthened further. We think the government is 100 times more active in controlling the disclosure of information than in controlling corruption,” Iftekhar said.

He said journalists and many others are being harassed by attacks or cases due to the government’s tendency to control the flow of information. “We think it is a suicidal move and the government should come out of it.”

Replying to a question, Iftekhar said checking corruption is surely a tough job, but not impossible if the government has strong political will and efforts to implement it.

He said those involved in corruption must be brought to justice and the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) must play an active and impartial role in finding out the corrupt to reduce corruption.

Lack of planning

The TIB executive director said they tried to portray the challenges in Covid-19 vaccine activities in light of good governance indicators in their research.

“We found the deficit in the indicators of good governance in vaccine management activities. Especially, a third party was given the scope to get benefited by procuring vaccines in an ambiguous process by violating rules and laws,” he said.

Iftekhar said as public representatives are involved with the third party, it cannot have any business relationships with the government since it is prohibited by the law. “Despite that, it happened and we still do not get any explanation of it.”

“There is a strategic deficit in procuring the vaccine. Especially, the current vaccine crisis has been created for depending on a single source or institution in procuring vaccine jabs on political considerations due to the influence of a business quarter, causing stagnation in vaccination activities,” he said.

Iftekhar said the government announced to give vaccines to around 140 million people or 80pc of the population, but no specific strategy and pragmatic framework have so far been formulated to accomplish the challenging job.

“Nothing is said about how the vaccines will be collected and distributed. In the budget speech, it was mentioned that 2.5 million people will be given vaccine each month and then it will take more than four years. So, we think the lack of a well-thought-out plan and framework is now the main deficit in this regard,” he observed.

He said the government could not ensure the access of the disadvantaged people to the vaccination program due to a lack of coordination in its implementation. “There is also discrimination in providing the vaccine as the registration process was difficult for the disadvantaged people.”

Iftekhar said the risk of Covid-19 infection had increased in the country due to the government’s insincerity in enforcing the law to force people to maintain its guidelines and a section of people’s apathy to maintaining health safety rules.

He said corruption and irregularities in the health sector are going on as that happened in the past.

“Purchase and procurement rules have been violated, information about illegal transaction regarding the appointment of manpower has surfaced, work orders have been given in favour of institutions accused of graft violating rules and temporary hospitals were made without assessing the utility and those were later shut wasting the people’s money,” Iftekhar said.

Pvt hospitals too costly for Covid treatment

Private hospitals charge up to Tk five lakh on an average for treatment of a corona patient  as low-come middle class people are forced to go there due to shortage of ICU facilities in government hospitals.

“A large number of the population, mostly the middle class, has been forced to seek treatment at private hospitals due to lack of facilities in dedicated government Covid-19 hospitals,” Md Julkarnayeen, a research fellow at TIB, said while presenting the results of the study 

Besides, the research sheds light on the fact that the rate of inclusion of low-income, rural and impoverished people has been very low in the vaccination drive largely due to lack of publicity and complicated registration process.

The study found that around 43pc of the vaccinated population have faced problems in registering. The inclusion of women under the vaccination drive was 37pc, the study said.

The TIB report said that irresponsibility and lack of coordination between government bodies have caused sufferings to expatriates returning to overseas work. They have to spend an additional Tk 60,000-70,000 each for not having a vaccination certificate.

Covid treatment costs Tk 5 lakh per patient

The study conducted by TIB also highlighted that a Covid-19 patient needs to spend more than Tk 5 lakh on average for paying the cost of treatment.

This is due to the shortage of Intensive Care Units (ICUs) in government hospitals. At present, there are only 664 government ICU beds allocated for Covid-19 across the country. Among those, 364 are in Dhaka city, 33 in Chattogram city and 256 in the remaining 72 districts.

Md Julkarnayeen, a research fellow at TIB, noted that the closure of Covid-dedicated hospitals and treatment crisis have driven especially the middle-class patients to private hospitals.

The study further drew attention to the fact that 78pc of the vaccinated population had to pay money during the registration process. 

In addition, due to the disparity in vaccination between rural and urban areas, 43pc of the vaccinated population have faced various problems in registering, the study revealed.