Editorial
Prisons without doctors
Take steps before it gets worse
IT is dreadful revelation that 57 out of 67 prisons across the country do not have a single doctor to come to the aid of the inmates during illness. What is more atrocious is that prisoners serving rigorous imprisonment are given the task of nursing the patients because of the absence of trained nurses. We wonder what would the situation look like if epidemic of an infectious disease breaks out in any one of those prisons. As there would be no place to shift thousands of prisoners within a short time it is only probable that a large number of them would get infected and face death or impairment of health.
The back-page news item in this daily says that the jail authorities have only 13 doctors for a total of 90,000 prisoners all over the country.
Though the Directorate of Prisons had applied for 58 additional doctors in 2007 to join a team of 19 doctors in 16 jails, no new doctor has been given posting till date. There is more to the sheer mismanagement of the jails, which became conspicuous in the report. In addition to non-availability of doctors, over 50 jails have no hospital facilities and as a result, the authorities have to send critical patients to nearby hospitals for treatment.
But that mostly happens in the case of some high-profile prisoners who use power and money to get the facilities. According to the Inspector General of Prisons doctors do not show interest in getting posted at prisons since outdoor practice is prohibited. Despite a direction given in the jail code the sum of Tk. 5,000 as non-practicing allowance is not being given to the doctors thereby causing their frustration to heighten further.
There is no denying that a place crammed with human beings, whether law-breakers or not, must have certain facilities to make the place worth living. Denying those facilities is absolute violation of human rights. Healthcare is a basic right of all humans; therefore, having no medical officer in a prison house where thousands of convicts have to live for years together cannot be a non-priority. It should have been ensured before taking in prisoners. The government will have to find doctors and give them the required benefits so that they may offer the services needed in the prisons.
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