Barishal’s 200-bed children’s hospital, initiated eight years ago and built as the region’s only dedicated paediatric facility, remains incomplete despite Tk20 crore already being spent.
After years of missed deadlines, design changes, and questionable decisions over site selection, the government has now moved to convert the yet-unfinished structure into a paediatric ward under Sher-e-Bangla Medical College Hospital, rather than launching it as an independent hospital.
The shift has triggered strong objections from doctors, nurses and health professionals, who say the facility may never function as intended due to fundamental flaws rooted in the project’s troubled construction history.
Construction began in 2017 on two acres of land in Amanatganj under a national programme to establish a children’s hospital in each of the eight divisions. The Tk24 crore project was scheduled to be completed by January 2019.
Officials opined repeated design alterations, lengthy approval delays, and complications linked to filling the large pond on which the building stands as the main reason behind the incomplete project.
Engineers and medical staff say these issues stemmed from poor planning and political interference from the outset.
Even though the four-storey structure was declared ‘physically complete’ last year, the contractor has still not formally handed over the building. As a result, the complex remains unprotected, unused and without essential installations such as a functional substation, generator and electrical system, works that are only now being rushed with an additional Tk7 crore allocation.
Executive Engineer Faisal Ahmed of the Public Works Department acknowledged that many delays were avoidable.
“Had the site been beside the main hospital, it would have been better. But the location was determined by local political decisions,” he said.
Earlier this year, authorities decided to bring the incomplete structure under SBMCH and shift all paediatric services there, a move that has left the medical college administration stunned.
Hospital Director Brigadier General AKM Mashiul Munir said integrating an unfinished facility located nearly three kilometres away is ‘administratively and clinically unrealistic’, especially when not a single post has been approved for the 350 staff required to run a 200-bed paediatric hospital.
“We are already struggling under a 1964 organogram. Adding a distant, unfinished building without staff, budget, or support is simply not feasible,” he said.
The overstretched 44-bed paediatric ward at SBMCH treats around 527 children every day, nearly eight lakh annually, leading to severe overcrowding and cross-infection risks. Doctors warn that shifting critical services nearly three kilometres away would endanger patients, disrupt academic training for medical students and further complicate emergency care.
Interns and nurses say a paediatric ward cannot operate in isolation, “It relies on multiple linked units. Transporting critically ill children back and forth would be dangerous.”
With no staffing plan, no integration framework, and no clear purpose, even as Tk27 crore is being spent, the divisional children’s hospital risks becoming nothing more than an abandoned, unfinished building.
