Rifat Zafreen :
These days Sathi looks very upset – doesn’t say anything – doesn’t share anything. Most of the time stays alone, she looks depressed and frustrated. Sathi’s mother and her family members are worried. Finally, while Sathi is taken to a psychiatrist, truth comes out—she suffers from severe genital disease that she did not share with anyone. This has led her situation to much critical state though she finally gets over and recovers, but it cost her a lot.
This scenario stated above is not a single issue in the healthcare sector of women in the country, especially reproductive health issue is truly in a concerned shape where it deserves much attention. Both the concerned departments and women need to be aware and much active.
Bangladesh is one of the most densely populated country in the world. Population has become a huge burden for us. The area of Bangladesh is too small to fulfill all the needs of the people. As a result over-population creates a lot of critical problems. And thus reproductive health care has become difficult to manage among other problems. Since government has taken a lot of initiatives in this regard, community healthcare system at the grassroots level is working excellent. Vaccination programme is also working successfully and has achieved world recognition through achieving UNGA award this year.
All the relevant problems exist in the society eventually lead to a general problem named poverty. Hence, it could be said that poverty of our country is largely an aftermath effect of its population problem. And this very population problem is closely related to the quality access to reproductive health care services. Raising awareness and bringing improvement in this issue is a dire need for having success in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and so quality of healthcare services should be emphasized as one of the most priority issues in the country.
It is because of the hard work of the Government and the NGOs healthcare facility to ensure reproductive health care across the country; people are getting benefits and services early.
To ensure this service, it is not all about building or setting up physical infrastructures, it is more about having well trained human resources who can take the challenges of ensuring reproductive health care and rights focusing family planning for the women and particularly the adolescent girls in line with the proposed SDG goals.
It is very praiseworthy that Bangladesh has reduced maternal mortality by 40% in the last decade. But still there are some inequalities and hindrances in ensuring quality issues which need to be addressed closely. Without meeting up these issues, it may hamper our achieved success in this field.
Bangladesh needs to invest more in maternal and child health facilities to achieve the newly set targets those the government of Bangladesh is already committed to achieve. But this is also true that the government is trying its best to ensure health services for all.
Well-designed programme need to be taken carefully. Implementation and monitoring process should be monitored closely. It is needed to generate demand both in public and private sector. For achieving success we need to understand how to measure the indicators of SDGs, which are more cross cutting in comparison to MDGs and here we need a holistic approach to achieve our goals and targets.
Without ensuring quality services, proper monitoring and strong human resource base insurances of reproductive health services in line with SDGs, it will be extremely difficult to achieve the targeted goals. Government with the support from the professional bodies, other health care providers and field workers should be engaged closely in this regard. Policy makers should initiate dialogues to develop the next health sector programme within the framework of SDGs. Strong and sustainable commitment should be there to have further betterment in the public healthcare state.
In the last decade Bangladesh has achieved praising success for providing and ensuring family planning service and primary health care service to the children and mother at the root level. Twelve thousand women have been trained midwifery at the field level and to strengthen the midwifery service, three thousand Midwife posts have been created. In 2007 the ratio of child taking by each woman was 2.7, which is now 2.2 and the ratio of receiving family planning system has been raised to 62 from 36 percent. Near about 60% women have been giving birth to their child in the hospital clinic currently. Quality sanitation facilities have been ensured. Initiative of keeping sanitary napkins for girls in the educational institutions under the supervision of a female teacher has been taken up, so that girls can collect sanitary pads from the schools during their emergency. All these initiatives of the government have paved a huge role in ensuring quality health and reproductive healthcare services.
In order to ensure delivery service available for all, currently through 13882 community clinics health service has been reached at the grass root level. Ratio of service taking from the community clinics has been increasing sharp. Thirty one types of medicines have been distributed from the community clinics for free to the people. Implementation of five years long ‘4th Health, Publichealth and Nutrition Program 2017-2022’ has been started.
Under the light of National 7th Five Year Plan and Vision 2021, compiled by the Ministry of Health and Family Planning has been initiated. The overall situation of health, population and nutrition will be hugely improved if this program gets implemented properly. This program will play a huge and important role to achieve the health related targets of the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030.
Both the print and electronic media and the local opinion leaders, teachers can be great sources in raising and creating awareness about reproductive healthcare and services among people. We hope within a very short time the country will be able to claim and declare to meet up the relevant targets of the SDGs in this line. It will be possible through ensuring quality in reproductive healthcare services among others in a fast and qualitative way.
(PID-Project Feature)
