IT IS unfortunate that a technically ready health facility remains unused at a time when public health services struggle to care for suffering patients. The newly built 500-bed annexe to the National Institute of Neurosciences and Hospital in Dhaka has been non-operational since its inauguration in December 2025. The 15-storey facility, built at a cost of more than Tk 500 crore, has yet to become fully operational because of an acute shortage of human resources and inadequate budgetary allocation. As a result, costly medical equipment, including CT and MRI scanners and other radiology machines, along with a 36-bed intensive care and 24-bed post-operative units, are lying idle. The hospital’s main facility is, meanwhile, running to full capacity, leaving physicians with little option but to refer some patients to private facilities. A man, as New Age reports, was waiting outside the hospital with his infant son, who had suffered severe head injuries in a road accident and was referred there from Rajshahi Medical College Hospital for advanced treatment. The infant could not, however, be admitted because no beds were available, forcing the family, unable to afford private care, to wait for a bed to become available.
The government approved the expansion project in 2018 to meet the growing demand for neurological health care at the hospital, which was established in 2012 and gradually expanded from 300 to 500 beds. The hospital now serves as main public neurological facility, treating patients suffering from strokes, brain and spinal injuries, Parkinson’s disease, dementia, epilepsy and other complex neurological conditions. Hospital authorities say that 1,288 of the 1,461 approved posts for the extension remain vacant, including a severe shortage of physicians, nurses and support staff, which prevents the facility from becoming fully operational. The neuroscience hospital is not the only case of an unused hospital facility. It was reported in March that a 200-bed children’s hospital in Rajshahi has also remained non-operational for nearly three years because of administrative uncertainty and delays in approving its staffing structure despite an acute shortage of intensive care facilities for children at Rajshahi Medical College Hospital. In many government hospitals, essential medical equipment also remain out of order, hampering the treatment of patients, who are compelled to resort to costly diagnostic services from private facilities. When the physician-to-population ratio and bed availability are already far below global standards, it is unacceptable that ready facilities stay unused because of delays in timely government decisions.
The government should, therefore, take early steps to make the ready-to-use public health facilities operational and allocate essential human and financial resources. The government should also revisit its strategy for health sector planning as such delays have already proved fatal amid a measles outbreak.
