Bangladesh government hospitals own MRI machines — and can't fix them when they break.
Every OEM (original equipment manufacturer — the company that made the machine) in Bangladesh services only the imaging units it sold through its own authorised agent. When a scanner from a different brand breaks, that agent will not touch it. No company in Bangladesh sells a single service agreement covering all major brands at once. The result is multi-month to multi-year outages in public hospitals, while patients queue at private clinics paying three to seven times the government rate.
01The pain
'The scanner at Chattogram Medical College Hospital is broken. Private hospitals charge three times more. My family cannot afford it.' Mia Mohammad Idris, a retired police constable aged 70, told TBS News from his hospital bed. He needed an MRI scan (magnetic resonance imaging: a machine that uses a magnetic field to produce detailed images inside the body) to assess his spine.2
Government hospitals across Bangladesh own roughly 2,500 medical imaging units: MRI scanners, CT scanners (computed tomography, an X-ray cross-section imager), digital X-rays, and ultrasound. These span 5,000 hospitals and 13,000 diagnostic centres. Every OEM (original equipment manufacturer: GE, Siemens, Philips, Canon, Mindray) services only the machines it sold through its authorised agent. When a scanner from a different brand breaks, that agent will not touch it.2
Chittagong Medical College Hospital's MRI was out of service from August 2022 to June 2025 (34 months). A part was cannibalized from another hospital's machine to fix it; the scanner broke again in March 2026. The hospital director told TBS News: 'We have to rely on suppliers for repairs.'1 Over 1,500 patients per month queue at private clinics in Chittagong, paying BDT 9,000 to BDT 100,000 (Bangladeshi taka; roughly $84 to $940) for a scan that costs BDT 1,500 to 3,000 at a government hospital.2
Further reading
- 1 TBS News Bangladesh — investigation into Chittagong Medical College Hospital equipment failures, documenting the MRI machine's extended outage, the CT scanner breaking three times in three months, and the OEM repair-cost dispute (supplier demanded BDT 93 lakh vs. the government estimate of BDT 63.96 lakh); quotes CMCH Director Brig. Gen. Md. Shamim Ahsan: tbsnews.net
- 2 TBS News Bangladesh — nationwide survey of government hospital MRI outages: CMCH, Chittagong General Hospital, DMCH (Dhaka Medical College Hospital), Sylhet, Rajshahi and others all documented; quotes CMCH Director Brig. Gen. Shamim Ahsan, DMCH Director Brig. Gen. Nazmul Haque, and the case of Mia Mohammad Idris (retired constable, denied MRI access): tbsnews.net
- 3 TBS News Bangladesh — structural investigation into why government hospital maintenance is broken: hospitals have no authority to fix their own equipment; all repairs must route through the National Electro-Medical Equipment Maintenance Workshop and Training Centre (NEMEMW) or the Health Engineering Department (HED); quotes DMCH Director Brig. Gen. Nazmul Haque and Prof. Liaquat Ali on decentralisation: tbsnews.net
02Who solves this today
We looked for companies selling annual maintenance contracts (AMCs — paid service agreements covering repair labour, spare parts, and emergency call-outs) for medical imaging machines in Bangladesh. We searched product pages in English and Bengali (the national language), scanned trade directories, reviewed procurement records from DGDA (the Directorate General of Drug Administration — Bangladesh's medical-device regulator), and checked the four local vendors that Scout had pre-screened.
Every vendor we found is either a single-brand distributor (authorised by one OEM to service that OEM's machines only), an Indian company with no Bangladesh operations, or a government workshop that cannot take private commissions. No company in Bangladesh sells a single AMC covering GE, Siemens, Philips, Canon, and Chinese-brand imaging units under one agreement.
In neighbouring India, companies such as Avoor Meddplus already market multi-brand imaging AMCs — covering GE, Siemens, Philips, CT, MRI, digital radiography (DR), and C-ARM (a mobile X-ray unit) under one contract. That business model works commercially. It does not operate in Bangladesh.
This is an open opportunity for founders. Bangladesh has 13,000 diagnostic centres and 5,000 hospitals. Private hospital chains in Dhaka and Chittagong already absorb patients who overflow from broken government equipment. A multi-brand biomedical service company — headquartered in Dhaka, with field engineers in Chittagong, Rajshahi, and Khulna — selling annual maintenance contracts covering GE, Siemens, Philips, Canon, and Chinese-brand imaging machines would be the first of its kind in the country. If you build or know a company that already solves this pain, email contact@aikraft.com — we will list them.
No companies listed yet — get on this page. This page is in no-solver-yet mode: we could not find a vendor whose product page concretely addresses the multi-brand imaging maintenance gap in Bangladesh. If you build or know a company that does, write to us and we will list them within 7 business days. If your company is mentioned by name elsewhere on this page and you want a correction or removal, that runs through the same channel. Email contact@aikraft.com.
Operators discussing this
Bangladesh's hospital directors and biomedical engineers discuss equipment failures inside private hospital management WhatsApp groups and internal networks that the Scout harness cannot reach. The named voices on this page come from TBS News Bangladesh, which has run three documented investigations into government hospital equipment failures, each with named on-the-record quotes from hospital directors. These are the people managing broken scanners and unanswered repair letters.
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"We are repeatedly writing to the authorities concerned to repair the machines and the lab. We have to rely on suppliers for repairs."
TBS News Bangladesh — CMCH equipment investigation — Brig. Gen. Md. Shamim Ahsan, Director, Chittagong Medical College Hospital; on record, named, 2023. The CMCH MRI had been broken for more than a year at the time of the interview; the outage ran to 34 months in total.
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"The engineers of the institution from which the MRI machine of the radiology department was purchased said that it is no longer possible to fix it. Due to this, MRI services are completely closed for patients in the hospital. We have informed the ministry about this."
TBS News Bangladesh — nationwide MRI outage survey — Brig. Gen. Nazmul Haque, Director, Dhaka Medical College and Hospital (DMCH); on record, named. DMCH had two MRI machines — both were out of order at the time of reporting.
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"We do not have the power to fix anything broken in the hospital. The PWD or HED solves emergency problems, but perennial problems are a little more difficult to solve. This makes it difficult for us to provide the services that people want."
TBS News Bangladesh — government hospital maintenance investigation — Brig. Gen. Nazmul Haque, Director, DMCH; on the governance structure that prevents hospitals from fixing their own equipment. PWD = the Public Works Department; HED = the Health Engineering Department — the two government agencies that must authorise any repair, including replacing a broken lightbulb.
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