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Taxing foreign charity initiative?

A rational approach needed
26 January 2006
• EDITORIAL
The ordeal faced by an American charity group in the clearance and delivery of some medical equipment brought in by a team of surgeons for their use in collaboration with the Department of Reconstructive and Plastic Surgery (PPRS) of Dhaka Medical College Hospital has been unfortunate. The equipment was brought free of charges on a returnable basis. The experts had been routinely visiting the country on a bi-annual basis for the last seven years. The equipment in question and the experts were but too well known to the concerned authorities, hence we find it regrettable that delay occurred in the clearance of the equipment. Noticeably, due to this delay surgery could not be performed on some poor patients including children, few of whom came from outside the capital, since the foreign medical experts had to leave the country to meet their other commitments elsewhere.

In a similar incident reportedly a team of French doctors who came to Bangladesh to provide the treatment of eye complications had to leave the country without providing the much needed specialised treatment.

Specialised medical services of the nature in question are few and far between and whatever facilities exist within the country are expensive and beyond the reach of common man. It is thus imperative that we hold on to such quality facilities when offered free of cost by a charitable organisation. If a change in the basic rules is needed for a speedy and hassle-free clearance of equipment, let us not hesitate to bring it about here and now. Meanwhile, a probe into the incidents will be in order to find out where things went wrong and how.

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