Practice of Islamic Medical Ethics in Bangladesh

Abstract

Bangladesh is an over populate Muslim country. It has low income with high density of population. Statistics shows that every 4000 people have one registered doctor. About half of the population is out of medical facilities. The high rate of death of half of the infants of Bangladesh is owing to the lack of nutrition. Medical sector is corrupted like all other sectors in Bangladesh. The physicians are involved in mal practice. This sector is related to life and death, health and manpower. So it is very important to remove corruption from this sector. Most of our people follow Islamic Shariah and expect to see our laud to be a prosperous and happy country free from corruption. But the fact is opposite. So it needs clear understanding of the Islamic Medical Ethics and its practices layover people. The aim of the study is to describe the medical ethics discussed in Islam, to assess the level of knowledge to Islamic Medical Ethics (IME) among the selected doctors and medical staffs in Bangladesh. It also aimed to study the practice of Islamic medical ethics in different hospitals and clinics and to reveal the patients' expectations and attitudes towards doctors and staffs regarding ethical issue. To carry out these objectives descriptive, analytic and survey methods are used in the study. The Holy Quran and the Hadith, ltzma and Qiyas are used as the sources of literature of Islamic Shariah. The data are collected from the respondents by face to face interview and are also treated as raw materials of the study. 100 doctors, 100 patients and 70 medical staffs are selected as respondents by purpose random selection. Frequency distribution, Chi-squire test, and p-test are used in data analysis. Some findings have been got from this analysis. Islamic Medical Ethics does not support practicing all the medical issues like western medical ethics. British and European medical ethics are built on Hippocratic Oath, Mill's Utilitarian and Kantian Rationalism. American medical ethics are built on that Oath and as well as on the theme of Pragmatism where IME has an exclusive view that is not different from religious practice. Other findings are of the level of know ledge and moral practices of IME of the doctors' and medical staffs are found below medium standard. The knowledge and ethical practices of patients are upper medium standard. But the knowledge of the Quran and the Hadith of the respondent regarding IME is very poor. The study also finds that the moral practice of HQMC (High Quality Medication Center) is better than that of LQMC (Low Quality Medication Center) and the knowledge level of IME of LQMC is higher than that of HQMC. In the light of these findings this study recommends that punishment should be ensured to those physician who are involve in mal practice. The doctors should be given better intensive along with stopping their works in more than one place and the seats for medical students might be increased. Finally it needs to elaborate the ethical course and medical jurisprudence in medical education. Religious medical ethics especially Islamic Medical Ethics should be included in the syllabus of medical educations for better ethical training.