Industrial oxygen sold as medical oxygen

A mobile court on Tuesday fined and jailed some businessmen for filling up medical oxygen cylinders with industrial oxygen and selling those at many times higher prices amid the crisis of medical oxygen needed to treat critical COVID-19 patients.

Joined drives by the Rapid Action Battalion and the Directorate General of Drug Administration in Tajgaon and Gulshan’s Kalachandpur areas found clinics and businessmen stockpiling unauthorised cylinders of oxygen and selling those at very high prices to critically ill COVID-19 patients.

The mobile court fined Tk 15 lakh and jailed a clinic official for one year, said RAB executive magistrate Palash Kumar Bosu, who led the mobile court.

Palash said that at first they raided a clinic named Maisha Care Limited at Kalachandpur of Gulshan where they found that the clinic authorities were deceiving COVID-19 patients and their relatives claiming that they had ICU facilities while they didn’t have any.

The clinic was found stockpiling medical oxygen cylinders from unauthorised sources and selling those to patients at eight to 10 times higher price, Palash said.

The mobile court jailed clinic managing director Mohibul Islam for one year, fined the clinic Tk four lakh and seized 30 oxygen cylinders.

After disinfectants, hygiene products and some essential commodities, people are panic buying medical oxygen and related equipment to heal the respiratory distress in case they contracted COVID-19.

Many affluent people are stocking up on oxygen cylinders, though some of them have not yet got the disease, and were willing to pay any amount of money, said traders and physicians.

The upshot of the sudden rise in the demand is the unavailability of medical oxygen for those who really need it, a steep rise in its market price and an increased risk of fire and explosion hazards in the residential areas.

The RAB and the DGDA then raided the Tejgaon Colony Bazar market and found some businessmen there pouring LP gas and industrial oxygen into medical cylinders.

Magistrate Palash said that they found that some LP gas traders were counterfeiting medical oxygen there; even a hair-cutting salon owner was stockpiling oxygen cylinders and selling them at three to four times higher prices.

The mobile court raided a business named SSK Enterprise there which mainly sold industrial oxygen but were pouring that oxygen into medical cylinders.

A sudden rise in the demand for medical oxygen amid the rapid spread of the coronavirus infection has caused an acute shortage of the life-saving medical item and pushed up its price in the capital city of Dhaka and the port city of Chattogram.

A section of cylindered oxygen traders have created an artificial crisis of the medical-grade item capitalising on the COVID-19 pandemic.

Earlier, another RAB mobile court on Monday night jailed a fake doctor of a private hospital in Dhaka’s Shyamoli area and fined the hospital owner and manager Tk six lakh in total for providing substandard services to patients.

Fake doctor Saiful Islam, a director and the so-called OT in-charge of Sebika General Hospital, was given one-year imprisonment and fined Tk two lakh, said police superintendent Mohammad Mohiuddin, a company commander of RAB-2.

The RAB-2 mobile court fined hospital owner Shakhawat Hossain Tk four lakh and manager Mohibullha Tk two lakh, mobile court executive magistrate Palash said.

It also awarded six-month jail to six brokers each.

They used to cheat patients at different nearby government hospitals and trick them into getting admitted to different low-quality private hospitals, RAB official Mohiuddin said.

He said that there were around 500 brokers active at various government hospitals, including the National Institute of Traumatology and Orthopaedic Rehabilitation and the National Institute of Cardiovascular Diseases.

Whenever patients arrive, he added, in those hospitals from remote villages the brokers convince them to move to different private hospitals saying that government hospitals are not good.

In exchange, the brokers get Tk 5,000 to 50,000 per patient depending on their condition, he said.

News Courtesy: www.newagebd.net