Must increase budget to reduce out-of-pocket health expenditures: Dr Atiur

The health budget must be increased significantly to reduce out-of-pocket health expenditure of primary healthcare-seekers in rural Bangladesh, said Unnayan Shamannay Chairman Professor Dr Atiur Rahman.

“Around 5 per cent of the National Budget is currently being allocated to the health sector. Adding another 2 to 3 percentage points to this allocation and then channeling the additional allocations to increase the supply of free-of-cost medicine in rural healthcare facilities and to fill out the vacant posts in those healthcare facilities could reduce out-of-pocket health expenditures to a significant extent,” said the economist while presenting the keynote at a discussion on health budget.

He presented the results of a simulation that shows that increasing allocations for the said sub-sectors of the health budget out-of-pocket health expenditure could be reduced from 69 per cent to 51 per cent, said a press release.

According to the release, the discussion was jointly organised by BRAC University and Unnayan Shamannay on Monday in the capital.

Speakers at the discussion said current health expenditure in Bangladesh as a share of its GDP is just 2.5 per cent, and this ratio is lowest in South Asia.

They said due to lower government allocations for the health sector, the country's out-of-pocket health expenditure remains high. Therefore, public allocations to the health sector must be increased in a prudent manner.

Former secretary of the planning ministry Md Mamun-al-Rashid was the chief guest at the discussion also attended by Dhaka University Professor M Abu Eusuf, BIDS Senior Research Fellow Dr SM Zulfiqar Ali, and additional secretary to the health ministry Kazi Zebunnessa Begum.

Speaking as the chief guest, Mamun-al-Rashid said, “The related ministries and divisions/directorates lack the capacity to implement the budget. It is a major obstacle to increasing allocations to health sector.”

He, therefore, emphasised the need to enhance the capacity of spending the allocated resources.