Life As A Commodity

A Dhaka hospital has reached an understanding with the family of a dead man: all dues, more than a million Taka (the Bangladesh currency), will be paid to the hospital within months. The understanding gave opportunity to the family to have the dead body of the man – a father, a husband.

The man died in the hospital while he was undergoing treatment there. The treatment cost was a few million Taka. The family paid a part of that amount of money, and was failing to pay the rest. The hospital withheld handing over the dead body to the grief-stricken family. It was claiming full payment of its fees and charges. The family, the dead man's two children and wife, was helpless. The Dhaka journalists brought the incident to the health minister's notice. The minister requested the hospital to hand over the dead body considering the incident of failure from a humanist view. The dead body was handed over after the compromise was concluded.

How the money, more than a million, will be paid? The daughter of the dead man doesn't know as she claimed.

The man died on August 15, 2014, and the dead body was handed over on August 17, 2014.

From a business point of view, one may say, withholding the dead body was not wrong. One may say: it would have set a precedent if the dead body was handed over without having all the dues clear; others, in future, will take opportunity of not paying hospital charges and fees; the hospital has not opened a charity window; it has invested money.

It's a pure money-question: investment and return, loss and profit, ways investment and profit are made. 

The dead body-story once again exposes the face of the market, exposes the reality of handing over health care to private capital. Questions centering the dead body once again search the relevant parts of the constitution of the republic that promise honor, safety and life for all its citizens.

At last, the axe of reason and the power of justice will find the fact: life is not a commodity, life is not tradable, life should not be kept at the mercy of market.


 taken from a lengthy article here