Bangladesh-Norway Friendship Hospital

The health sector of Bangladesh is often characterized by lack of availability of basic health care services for both rural and urban populations, lack of adequate equipments, and lack of qualified health personnel which contribute to a malfunctioning health care system. Even though the Government of Bangladesh is committed to reach the MDGs in relation to health by providing adequate and improved health services to the population, there is still a lot to be done in order to reach the goals.

A recent situation analysis done on the health related MDGs shows that unless the government makes basic health care services available for all the people both in rural and urban areas and put more efforts in terms of finance, skilled human resources as well as makes necessary changes in planning and implementation strategies, it will be difficult for the government to reach most of the MDGs by the year 2015. The analysis also shows that some of the parameters may be met but most of them will not. There are many challenges that are contributing to reach the health related MDGs such as the economic situation, climate change, cultural and geographical factors.

The current situation of the country’s health sector is: it has a total of 13 government medical college hospitals, 6 postgraduate hospitals, 25 specialized hospitals and 80 various types of district level hospitals. There are also a total of 397 Upazila health care hospitals with bed capacity of 30 and 50, and the total number of Union health and family welfare clinic is about 3.375. The ratio of health personnel against the number of population is very low. The disparities between urban and rural areas are also huge. There are 18.2 physicians, 5.8 nurses and 0.8 dentists per 10,000 populations in urban area while the corresponding figures in rural area are 1.1, 0.8, and 0.08 respectively. The huge disparities in ratios between health personnel and the population undoubtedly also affect the quality of services that the people can avail both in urban and rural areas.

The total hospital beds, including private hospitals and clinics, are about 40,773 of with over 29,000 beds in government hospitals. According to health sector experts there is a huge shortage of hospital bed facilities in the country. They point out that there is a need for more than 1,50,000 hospital-beds to treat the patients who are seriously ill on a daily basis, in addition to patients who needs treatment for various types of emergency injuries as well as patients who suffer from moderate illness. All Upazila and district hospitals are supposed to have a functioning ambulance, but in most cases there is no ambulance available. In some cases, the hospitals may have an ambulance but it is often out of order or have no driver.

It is the fact that the equipments in the government hospitals are often old, faulty and managed by unskilled personnel. There are 23,000 medical-doctor posts in the whole country, but only 15,000 doctors are recruited. As a result about eight thousand posts remain to be vacant. The rural areas are mainly affected by the shortage of doctors. In cases, where the doctors are specifically appointed to serve the rural communities, they do not want to live and serve in the rural areas. As a result the populations of rural and semi-urban areas are highly excluded from the basic health care systems. This also results in many cases death of patient on their way to the hospitals which in most cases are situated in the cities.

In addition to the above situation of the country’s health care systems, there has been a dramatic increase in the incidents of caesarean operation during the last decade. The incidents of caesarean operation are almost fifty times more in private clinics than in government hospitals. It can be said that the private clinics and doctors often prioritize the economic interest over the health related benefit of the pregnant women and therefore suggest to deliver the baby by caesarean operation. Such unnecessary operations do not only harm the mother’s health but also in many cases ruin the poor family economically. The weakened economic situation later affects the nutritional status of the entire family, which often can leads to malnourished mothers and children. This is just one of many negative developments which are taking place within the health sector in Bangladesh. The Bangladesh-Norway friendship hospital will act as a catalyst to combat these kinds of development by arranging seminars, workshops and raise awareness among various issues with both health personnel and with the targeted community.