L-R: Chittagong Nuclear Medicine and Ultrasound Centre. . Hormone lab in Chittagong Nuclear Medicine and Ultrasound Centre.Photo: STAR

Rizwana Hasan, 65, was sitting for around two hours on the floor in the Centre for Nuclear Medicine and Ultrasound (CNMU), Chittagong, for ultrasonogram.
Rizwana, suffering from various old-age complications, was waiting for the doctor. She expressed her frustration for non-availability of benches to sit on and of female doctors for treatment in the centre.
Most of the doctors were seen absent till 10:00am on Wednesday at CNMU, scheduled to start functioning at 8:00am.
The CNMU provides diagnostic and therapeutic services to the indoor patients of Chittagong Medical College Hospital (CMCH) and the outdoor patients. Its services are comparatively cheap.
Sources said the patients are to wait for hours for diagnosis due to lack of adequate doctors and technologists. Sometimes they are told to come the next day after waiting for hours. Besides, the duty doctors come late to the centre occasionally.
A patient, requesting anonymity, said the doctors goes out of the room during the duty hours for several times, leaving the patients to wait for hours.
Imtiaz Uddin, who took his father there for ultrasonogram of upper abdomen, said they came here to save money but had to come the next day due to non-availability of sufficient doctors.
Dr Tamizuddin Ahmed, director of the centre, said the patients who come after 12:00 noon are told to come the following day. On an average 2,000 to 3,000 patients visit the centre a month. In the summer it increases to 3,000, of whom, 70 percent are women, he added.
He said they have enough sitting arrangements for the patients in the waiting room.
Dr Tamiz said they are trying to appoint at least one lady doctor in the centre.
The CNMU, Chittagong is situated on the CMCH campus.
Dr Abdul Karim, former director of the centre, said the CNMU is one of the country's most well-equipped diagnostic and therapeutic centres.
Dr Hossain Rasel, a medical officer, said the centre possesses some facilities which are very rare in the country. There include thyroid scan facility, bone scan facility and Bone Mineral Densitometry (BMD) facility. “We are providing the facilities at a very cheap rate,” he added.