Improving health sector can save country’s hard-earned currency

If health service in Bangladesh’s hospitals improves a little, it could save hundreds of crores of dollars that it spends for medical tourism abroad. According to an estimate, about 800 crore dollars are spent for this purpose annually. Last year in June, an Indian daily reported that about 54.3 per cent of people who visited India from Bangladesh visited the country for receiving medical services.
It is not that patients are going to India, Thailand and Singapore for the treatment of very critical diseases, even for a bypass surgery of heart or angioplasty patients are opting for these places. Not all bypass surgery or angioplasty patients, however, go abroad. Only those who can afford these treatments there go. For the relatively poor patients, the bypass surgery or stenting is being done here, and they are also keeping well.
There is also a trust deficit among the patients on the country’s health care service for which about lakhs of them are moving to other countries. Surprisingly in some cases, patients find going to India lucrative because the cost of treatment for many diseases are lesser in India than in Bangladesh.
There are, however, reasons for this trust deficit. First, even the costly private hospitals here have failed to create a patient-friendly treatment environment. Hospital staffs including doctors and nurses often do not behave with patients with the courtesy and care that they deserve which in countries abroad they get the full.
Moreover, if not in all cases, in some cases of course, doctors and technicians in these countries have an edge over their Bangladeshi counterparts in terms of expertise. These edges they have over Bangladeshi health professionals come more from the honesty they have rather than their merits.
When poor conditions prevail in the costly private health centres, the public health system is even more horrible. The Bangladesh government spends much less for health service. In the year 2021-22, it was only 2.9 per cent of the GDP. But Nepal spent 5.2 per cent of the GDP, Sri Lanka 3.1 per cent, Myanmar 4.6 per cent, India spent 3.6 per cent, and Pakistan spent 2.9 per cent. Vietnam spent the highest in this region, which is 6.4 per cent. Even, much of this low budget is eaten up by corrupt people involved in the department.
Since ministers and high officials can go abroad, often at the expense of public money, they pay little attention to improving the country’s health system. Until change comes to this prevailing dismal health service scenario in Bangladesh, patients will continue to go to different countries and with their visit money will also go out of the country.