Rural healthcare in bad shape
Sunday, 8 June 2008
Over the years, Bangladesh has developed layers of public health services across the country. There are big public hospitals in the big cities and smaller ones in the rural areas called upazilla or thana health complex. There are about 402 such complexes for about 460 thanas.
Built at huge costs over the years, the government took loans from donor agencies like the World Bank for the thana health complexes and massive allocations are made from the national budget regularly for their maintenance and functioning.
But any survey of these health complexes would reveal a very sad spectacle of irregularities and negligence of varying degrees in all of them. Usually, the government doctors posted in the health complexes stay away from their hospital jobs to engage in private practice within the hospital premises, neglecting the patients who come for free treatment. The daily food budget for that patients provided by the government is misappropriated substantially by the food contractors in connivance with the hospital staff. Therefore, the diets served to patients are of poor quality. Free life-saving drugs are black-marketed. The hospitals lack cleanliness and hygienic environment. Valuable machines go rust. There's none to run them. If they are there, they receive salaries without providing the service. The machines remain chronically out of order. It would make a long list if all the ills in these hospitals are mentioned. It would not be possible to mention them all in this letter.
The relevant authorities in the government must take a hard look at the prevailing state of affairs in these rural hospitals to remove corruption and irregularities in them and make their staff accountable. And this must be done without wasting time to make the big and routing allocations meaningful.
Fahmida Akhter
Twin Tower
Shantinagar, Dhaka.
Built at huge costs over the years, the government took loans from donor agencies like the World Bank for the thana health complexes and massive allocations are made from the national budget regularly for their maintenance and functioning.
But any survey of these health complexes would reveal a very sad spectacle of irregularities and negligence of varying degrees in all of them. Usually, the government doctors posted in the health complexes stay away from their hospital jobs to engage in private practice within the hospital premises, neglecting the patients who come for free treatment. The daily food budget for that patients provided by the government is misappropriated substantially by the food contractors in connivance with the hospital staff. Therefore, the diets served to patients are of poor quality. Free life-saving drugs are black-marketed. The hospitals lack cleanliness and hygienic environment. Valuable machines go rust. There's none to run them. If they are there, they receive salaries without providing the service. The machines remain chronically out of order. It would make a long list if all the ills in these hospitals are mentioned. It would not be possible to mention them all in this letter.
The relevant authorities in the government must take a hard look at the prevailing state of affairs in these rural hospitals to remove corruption and irregularities in them and make their staff accountable. And this must be done without wasting time to make the big and routing allocations meaningful.
Fahmida Akhter
Twin Tower
Shantinagar, Dhaka.