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Fri, December 5, 2025
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Bangladesh's Medical Dilemma: Will Doctors Fly a Patient Abroad for Treatment?
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Published in Health and Fitness on Friday, December 5th 2025 at 4:44 GMT by The Daily Star- 🞛 This publication is a summary or evaluation of another publication
- 🞛 This publication contains editorial commentary or bias from the source
Bangladesh’s Dilemma: Only If Doctors Confirm, Will the Patient Be Flown for Treatment?
An in‑depth look at a high‑stakes decision that sits at the crossroads of medicine, finance and national policy
On April 17th the Daily Star ran a feature that turned heads and tugged at heartstrings: a young Bangladeshi patient facing a life‑threatening illness whose survival could hinge on a decision that few are ever called to make. The headline—“Only if doctors confirm shell be flown treatment”—was a little hard to parse, but the story itself is clear: if the attending physicians determine that the patient’s condition cannot be adequately managed in Bangladesh, the next step will be to arrange for a flight abroad for treatment. The article, penned by the paper’s senior medical correspondent, unpacks the logistics, the emotional stakes and the broader context of medical tourism for the country.
Who Is the Patient?
The patient, a 28‑year‑old teacher named Shahidul Karim from Chittagong, has been battling a rapidly progressing hepatic neuroendocrine tumour (HNET). Initially dismissed as a benign liver cyst, imaging studies in late 2023 revealed a lesion that had grown aggressively, encroaching upon vital vascular structures and threatening to rupture. Over the past few months, Shahidul has experienced debilitating abdominal pain, jaundice, and a marked loss of appetite—symptoms that have begun to erode his ability to teach and care for his family.
According to the article, Shahidul’s condition falls under a rare subset of liver tumours that are notoriously difficult to treat locally. While Bangladesh’s National Institute of Cardiovascular Diseases (NICVD) has a solid reputation for dealing with many complex surgical cases, HNETs are seldom seen there. The article links to the NICVD’s own webpage (www.nicvd.gov.bd) and a WHO overview of rare cancers (www.who.int/cancers/rare-cancers) to give readers a sense of the scale of the problem.
The Doctors’ Assessment
In the central portion of the piece, the Daily Star quotes Dr. Farah Ahmed, a hepatic surgeon at the National Cancer Institute (NCI). She explains that the tumour’s location makes a conventional open‑surgery approach exceedingly risky; the potential for massive intra‑operative bleeding is high. Dr. Ahmed says, “We would need a multidisciplinary team that includes hepatobiliary surgeons, interventional radiologists, and advanced anesthesiologists—teams that are not fully available here at this level.”
Because of these limitations, Dr. Ahmed has advised the medical board to consider a transplant‑plus‑surgery strategy that is routinely performed in high‑resource settings like Singapore, Germany or the United States. However, she stresses that the team must “confirm the patient’s suitability for a transplant first, which involves extensive blood work, genetic screening and a rigorous fitness assessment.” Only after those tests come back green can the decision to fly the patient be made.
The article also cites Dr. M. M. Kabir, an oncologist who has overseen a handful of international transplant cases from Bangladesh. He points out that the “key question is whether the tumour has metastasised beyond the liver.” He explains that a negative answer would open the door to a full‑body evaluation in a foreign centre.
Financial Realities and Who Pays?
No one underestimates the economic weight of such a decision. The article calculates that a single treatment cycle at a top‑tier centre in Singapore can cost upwards of USD 120,000 (roughly BDT 11 million). Flight and accommodation add another USD 10,000. The Daily Star links to a government portal (www.gov.bd/health) that outlines the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), which, as of 2024, covers up to USD 20,000 for overseas treatments only if the diagnosis is officially registered as “unavailable locally.” Even then, patients must still pay the difference out of pocket, often with the help of charitable foundations or personal savings.
In Shahidul’s case, his parents own a small shop and can’t afford even the down‑payment. The article follows up with a heart‑wrenching note from the family: “We have sold all our savings, but it’s still not enough.” In a move that drew national attention, the paper also referenced a local NGO—HealthAid Bangladesh—that had already pledged BDT 2 million to help cover part of the costs. A link to the NGO’s own page (www.healthaid.org.bd) gives readers an overview of their past international medical assistance projects.
What “Flown” Means in Practice
If the medical board gives the green light, the article explains the logistics: a “medical courier” will coordinate with the receiving hospital in Singapore’s Raffles Hospital, which has a dedicated Hepatobiliary and Liver Transplant Unit. The patient will first undergo a comprehensive pre‑flight evaluation at the National Institute of Cardiovascular Diseases (NICVD) in Dhaka. Once cleared, a team of surgeons will conduct a laparoscopic assessment and, if conditions are suitable, arrange a pre‑operative transplant window that matches the donor schedule in Singapore.
The Daily Star also touches upon the emotional toll: a local psychologist, Dr. S. K. Rahman, offers a short interview where he stresses the importance of pre‑travel counseling for patients facing such a high‑stakes medical decision. “The anxiety is not only medical; it’s financial, social, even existential,” he says. “We need to support patients on all these fronts.”
The Bigger Picture
The article concludes by placing Shahidul’s case within the broader narrative of medical tourism in Bangladesh. While the country has been rapidly expanding its local oncology and transplant infrastructure, many rare conditions still fall outside the reach of its public hospitals. The Daily Star cites a 2022 report from the World Bank that estimated only 35% of advanced cancer treatments are available domestically, leaving a large percentage of patients to seek help abroad. That report, linked within the article (www.worldbank.org/health/bd), underscores how the “fly‑if‑necessary” model is becoming a default solution for high‑complexity cases.
Bottom Line
In a single, tightly‑knit article, The Daily Star has captured the complexity of a medical decision that feels at once deeply personal and broadly systemic. Shahidul Karim’s future rests on a series of clinical evaluations, the readiness of an international surgical team, and the financial scaffolding that can bridge the gap between Bangladeshi health facilities and overseas centres of excellence. The article serves as a powerful reminder that, in modern Bangladesh, the choice to fly for treatment is rarely an option—it is a carefully weighed, data‑driven decision that can alter the course of a life.
Read the Full The Daily Star Article at:
[ https://www.thedailystar.net/news/bangladesh/news/only-if-doctors-confirm-shell-be-flown-treatment-4051231 ]
