Gonoshasthaya Kendra is going to ensure quality dialysis services at affordable cost, said the hospital’s founder Zafrullah Chowdhury on Saturday.

He was addressing a discussion on kidney treatment ahead of the launch of the centre. 
The 100-bed Gonoshasthaya Kendra Dialysis Centre will be open on May 13 with the capacity of providing treatment to 500 patients in a day, said the doctor at the discussion at GK hospital auditorium at Dhanmondi in Dhaka. 

Zafrullah Chowdhury said GK was committed to provide healthcare at low cost as people had to pay higher for the mismanagement in government healthcare services. 
He said GKDC would provide dialysis service to 150 high income people at Tk 1,500, and 350 middle income people at Tk 1,100 while 25 poor people would enjoy the treatment at free of cost every day.

It was a big concern that private medical service providers in Bangladesh had to pay higher taxes in comparison with other service sector institutions. He said that the banks are also realising higher interests from the hospitals and it was a bar to low-cost health services to people. 

GKDC laboratory chief M Mahbubur Rahman said they are careful about the management of safe water as dialysis patient’s blood exposes to huge volume of water during a session.
‘Unsafe water delivers chemical and microbial contaminants to blood resulting unwanted illness, unhealthy life and early deaths,’ he said adding that adequate supply of pure water was essential for quality dialysis and healthy long life.

Nephrologists Mohammad Abdul Hamid, who joined GKDC from the Apollo Hospital, said there are about two crore kidney patients in Bangladesh and among them more than eight lakh patients undergo dialysis regularly. ‘Because of limited dialysis facilities 40,000 patients die without treatment every year,’ he said. At present many countries are providing free dialysis under coverage of health insurance of the citizens, he said.

About the facility of the GKDC he said that among the existing dialysis centres in the country only a few are providing quality dialysis while a good dialysis need water treatment quality, patient evaluation and compliance to prescribed treatment, correct machine and consumable items quality, experienced health care staff, and improvement of the patient’s nutritional statues. Among others representatives from different non-governmental organisations and right activists also present at the programme.

_{Source: newagebd.net}