Individual health cost must come down to 30 per cent from the existing 67 per cent to attain the health related Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
“It is essential to raise government allocation on health sector to reduce the out-of-pocket (OOP) expenditure to 30 per cent from 67 per cent to attain sustainable progress towards Universal Health Coverage (UHC) and health- related SGD,” Director General (additional secretary) of the Health Economics Unit M Ashadul Islam told BSS.
The government bears only 23 per cent of the country’s total health expenditures while 3 percent comes from voluntary payment schemes and 7 per cent from foreign donor agencies,” he added.
“The government allocation in health sector is increasing gradually every year, but it is not sufficient and finally the people have to spend a major portion of the health expenditure from their own pockets,” Islam said.
According to Bangladesh National Health Accounts (BNHA) 1997-20015, the government’s sharing on the total health expenditure (THE) kept on declining as the medical costs including medicines and hospital services become costlier.
“To minimize the gap between the public expenditure and the OOP, the government has embarked on the largest health sector program worth Taka 1,15,486 core for the fourth Health, Nutrition and Population (HNP) Sector Program-2017-2021 with a financial lay out 126 per cent higher than the third one,” Additional Secretary (development) of Health Services Division Harun-ur-Rashid Khan told BSS.
“It is encouraging that 84 per cent of the money for this program would come from the government’s own budget,” he added.
Khan said the cost could be controlled after the implementation of ‘Health Financing Strategy’ which would introduce a prepayment and protection scheme for controlling catastrophic health expenditures.
According to the BNHA, 70 percent of the health expenditure is spent on drugs, health care services and curative health care while just 10 percent accounts for preventive care. Only 2 percent of the government’s health spending goes to education and training of medical personnel.
The BNHA identified a number of reasons for the rise in the out-of-pocket health expenditures. Changes in disease pattern, expensive and long treatments, and medicines getting costlier are among those.
