Dhaka: The widespread allegations against the life support services provided by the hospitals in the city of Dhaka has come to spotlight again after a patient, whose life support was removed and pronounced dead, has come to life.

Not only the patient has now been shifted to a regular cabin from the Intensive Care Unit (ICU), he is also doing fine now, said his family.

This latest scandal of such inefficient medical service has taken place recently at Dr Sirajul Islam Medical College and Hospital, located at Dhaka’s Malibagh.

Mukbul Khan, a retired government employee from Natore, a northern district of the country, was admitted to the hospital’s ICU on 16 December after suffering a brain haemorrhage about two weeks earlier.

Mukbul was kept on life support as doctors there claimed that his condition was critical and he would die if the life support was removed. The hospital authorities were also quick to mention the cost of life support system, Tk 50,000- Tk 60,000 per day.

Considering the very low survival record once put on life support and the huge expenses involved, Mukbul’s family wanted to remove him from the support at the opposition of the doctors who stuck to their earlier claim of confirmed death if life support was taken off.

Hospital authorities then refused to remove life support at the hospital bed and asked to remove it in the ambulance by which Mukbul was carried to Sirajul Islam Hospital. They even refused to issue a death certificate before the patient’s family paid the due amount of Tk 57,327.

But, when Mukbul’s life support was taken off and his ‘dead body’ was being taken out of the hospital, his daughter noticed her father was opening his eyes.

‘I noticed tears dripping from my father’s eyes when we were taking his body onto the elevator,’ said Mukbul’s daughter Shimul Khan, who immediately took Mukbul to another hospital where he was shifted to a regular cabin from ICU on Monday.

Dr Sirajul Islam Medical College and Hospital official, Babli, admitted that such an incident had taken place there. ‘Yes, we are informed about such an incident,’ Babli told NTV Online adding that hospital’s ICU chief professor MA Mannan would have to be contacted for detailed information about this case.

MA Mannan, however, was not available to comment on this matter.

Talking to NTV Online Shimul poignantly described how they had already dug a grave in Natore for Mukbul Khan after Sirajul Islam Hospital authorities’ insistence that taking off life support would surely cause death to his father.

‘Many hospitals are exploiting their patients in this way. I’m shocked at what happened to us,’ Shimul added.