THE experts at a discussion titled ‘Universal Health Coverage: Bangladesh Perspective’ in the capital jointly organised by Brac, International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh (ICDDR,B), the Centre of Excellence for Universal Health Coverage made certain observations, as reported in the press, and mentioned that the government should give special attention to ensure quality healthcare for the poor who become the worst victims of weak governance in the health sector. A study by icddr,b showed that around 6.4 million or 4 percent people of the country scale down the poverty line by income poverty Index every year due to excessive costs of healthcare.
The Executive Director of Power and Participation Research Centre (PPRC) disclosed that with poor health, our workforce cannot contribute to a dynamic economy and even though Bangladesh has achieved many of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), but a stronger commitment is needed to achieve the Universal Health Coverage (UHC). Thus, the per capita national productivity is declining gradually and thereby the economy is lossing competitiveness on the one hand which is conversely lowering the life expectancy on the other.
Reports added that catastrophic health expenditure in Bangladesh is nearly 16 percent, which higher than the neighbouring countries. In Bangladesh, 64 percent of the total health expenditure comes from private source, while 26 percent comes from public fund and 10 percent from external funding by NGOs and development partners, according to the icddr,b. Experts added that inadequate and inefficient public healthcare and profiteering in the private healthcare sector are the two major factors behind such private spending. The ground reality is that people in the remote areas and urban slums are heavily deprived of healthcare. These poorest of the poor are dipping down in the poverty scale in the process.
To add to these existing ills, lack of proper government intervention and awful public healthcare services mean that the poor have to compete with one another to get meager medical assistance and pay a significant chunk of their earnings to avail the services.
It is understandable that Bangladesh cannot create a medical platform free of charge for citizens overnight, but it can take steps to sincerely improve the ill-equipped public hospitals and employ more efficient service.
What is more important is to design a pro-poor health care delivery system so as to ensure the bottom half get easy access to facilities needed to attain/retain a minimum physical capability conducive to work at minimum national productivity level. A government is needed more for the poor to be taken care of. That realisation is lacking.
