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Rural people make up 68% of total health expense: Atiur

Staff Correspondent
17 Jun 2022 00:00:00 | Update: 17 Jun 2022 10:49:18
Rural people make up 68% of total health expense: Atiur

Primary healthcare seekers in rural areas have to bear 68 per cent of the total health expenditure that can be brought down to 51 per cent by allocating an additional Tk8, 000 crore for health in the coming fiscal year, says former governor of Bangladesh Bank Professor Dr Atiur Rahman.

He made the remark while presenting the keynote paper at a post-budget online dialogue session organized jointly by Bangladesh Health Watch, Brac James P Grant School of Public Health, Brac University and Unnayan Shamannay on Thursday.

Atiur said the proposed budget considered the existing macroeconomic realities while allocating resources for the health sector for FY2022-23. However, it could have been a bit more liberal given the high demand for allocations in this sector.

Former Information Minister Hasanul Huq Inu emphasized developing a five-year plan for the health sector giving the highest priority to universal primary healthcare and then allocating the budget in alignment with that plan.

Dr Pran Gopal Dutta said the health insurance schemes were identified as the way forward to ensure universal access to quality and affordable healthcare for all.

He believes that the government should start piloting health insurance schemes as soon as possible.

Other major recommendations coming out of this dialogue session are increasing allocations for primary healthcare to reduce ‘out-of-pocket health expenditure’, supply of free-of-cost medicine and availability of diagnostic facilities at all government-run healthcare facilities.

Representatives from different government and non-government bodies related to public health pointed out lack of funding to deal with non-communicable diseases, inadequacy of training up health cadres and limited access to government-run health facilities in urban areas.

Chaos and mismanagement in the health sector were mentioned by most of the participants.

Former Director of DGHS’s Disease Control Dr Be-Nazir Ahmed said: “We have serious mismanagement in this sector and that is only because of lack of adequate number of medical people.”

Right people are not in the right place. “We are building well-equipped hospitals at upazilla levels but some of them are lying empty because of lack of medical technicians, doctor and nurses.”

He also pointed out the deteriorated urban health condition of the country and suggested that to solve the problem the government should engage local government more effectively.

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