DGHS plans to recruit dedicated public health care professionals

The country’s health sector has so far failed to raise mass awareness of both communicable and non-communicable diseases which was clearly evident during the pandemic.

Keeping in mind the failure the health authorities concerned are mulling over a plan to recruit dedicated public health professionals across the country to set up a strong surveillance system.

The system will not only work for early detection of communicable and non communicable diseases generating accurate data but will also help strengthen the primary health care service contributing to reducing pressure on tertiary-level hospitals.

At present Health Education Officers (HEOs) are carrying out the additional responsibilities of public health care.

According to multiple sources, from Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS) a proposal submitted to the Health Ministry has already been forwarded to the Ministry of Public Administration for further assessment.

The DGHS planned to establish a standard organogram with over 4,000 professionals that include officials of the DGHS head office, divisional, district and upazila level units, nurses, assistants, statisticians and computer operators.

The public health professionals will coordinate with local Institute of Epidemiology, Disease Control And Research (IEDCR) for epidemiological aspect and conduct mass awareness campaign to make people aware even of blood pressure and blood sugar helping them detect diseases at earlier stage.

Those public health professional will also play a key role during any epidemic situation. For example, they will help local administration to confine a disease to the origin area before it further spreads.

DGHS wants appointment of trained staff here.

They will also help gather information and assess the current status of any area and device action plans, one of the senior DGHS officials said.

The government has recruited thousands of doctors followed by nurses and now they are working on recruiting technologists and technicians, they said.

When contacted, Director (admin) of DGHS Prof Dr Samiul Islam said: “We don’t want to be where we were during the early period of Covid-19 pandemic. We want to set up a surveillance system so that it can handle a situation immediately.”

He, however, declined to provide detailed update of their initiative saying nothing had been confirmed yet.

Meanwhile Institute of Epidemiology, Disease Control and Research (IEDCR) has sent a proposal to the Health Ministry to recruit their required staff to operate across the country.

Although the ministry source said they had asked for around 700 different categories of professionals, Director of IEDCR, Prof Dr Tahmina Shirin said.

But she declined to make any further comment saying each and every agency or body of the country has manpower shortage and so does she. There is nothing for anybody to publish a report on how she is managing manpower for her institute.

Asked, public health expert Prof Dr Be-Nazir Ahmed told the Business Post that overall disease surveillance of IEDCR is not at the satisfactory level. They have many problems including manpower crisis and fund problems.

Appointing a professional and trained officer at district or upazila level would not work. Rather a unit has to be established to generate information to make people aware.