The Dhaka Medical College and Hospital (DMCH) authorities have explained the much-talked-about food bill for doctors.
The issue created social media storm following reports that the hospital spent Tk20 crore only for food for doctors in Covid19 duty.
DMCH Director Brig Gen AKM Nasir Uddin at a press briefing on Wednesday termed those reports as ‘false’ and explained the whole issue.
He said the total bill covers the hotel, food, transport and other costs of all 3,688 health workers.
He said they had rented 30 hotels for accommodating health workers according to their categories. Each day meal costs only Tk500, he said.
Around Tk11.86 crore without VAT has been spent for hotel, food and other expenditures. With 15% VAT the amount mounted to around Tk13.64 crore, he said.
The hotels were selected by a committee of four members. Some hotels helped them with 50 percent to 70 percent discount.
They also hired AC microbus, tourist coach, non-AC bus and BRTC double-decker for transportation with the cost of around Tk46.98 lakh.
The total expenditure for the doctors, nurses, health workers and Ansar members appointed for security should be Tk26 crore, he said, adding that they asked for Tk20 crore from the ministry assessing the last one month's expenditure.
The ministry approved the bill.
Of the Tk20 crore, they used Tk12.80 crore for hotel bills, Tk5.50 crore for food, and Tk1.70 crore for transport.
The DMCH is the largest facility in Bangladesh treating Covid19 patients.
So far 3,904 patients have been treated including 2,432 male and 1,427 female. Among them, 1,589 people were tested Covid-19 positive and 210 people died from the disease. Some 1,580 people were recovered which made the recovery rate 88.27 percent and the death rate 4.59 percent, according to the director.