The health authorities have sealed off a total of 882 hospitals, clinics, and diagnostic centres across the country in last 72 hours as the deadline ended on Sunday.
The massive crackdown on the unregistered private hospitals, clinics and diagonostic centres is first of its kind the country since the independence.
Earlier on Wednesday, an instruction issued by Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS) Additional Director General Professor Dr Ahmedul Kabir, who was performing the role of the acting DG, ordered the authorities concerned to shut down all such private organizations within 72 hours.
However, the health regulators only managed to sealed off one fourth of the unregistered health service provider outlets in their set time. Nearly 4,000 private hospitals, clinics and diagonostic centres were running their operations without any license across the country when the instruction was issued, says unofficial figure.
Health authorities said the drives against unregistered organizations are set to continue.
A total of 167 unregistered health outlets were closed down in Dhaka division, 229 in Chattogram division, 78 in Rajshahi division, 14 in Rangpur division, 96 in Mymensing, 59 in Barisal division, 35 in Sylhet division and 204 in Khulna division till Sunday evening.
Meanwhile, the authorities also halted temporarily the operations of health facilities which are yet to get any licenses but applied for it and allowed one month’s time to the facilities which had not renewed their licenses.
Some 18,000 health facilities in Bangladesh have got government approval since May 29, 2022, according to an estimate by the DGHS. Of those, nearly 11,000 have got online registration while 6,000 applied for online licenses and rest 1,000 did not apply to get registered online.
