Unutilised health budget proves the Health Ministry is failing to deliver

Bangladesh’s public health service in tatters: patients, mostly the poorer ones, crowd hospitals and health centres funded by the government everyday; due to paucity of beds patients are treated en masse on the floors of hospitals; for diagnosis of diseases patients have to go to private diagnostic centres that fleece them; essentials drugs are not supplied accepting a few of them; yet, it is really surprising that the Health Ministry fails to utilise the funds allocated in the national budget for the health sector like every year.

There is also an acute crisis of health professionals including doctors and nurses in the country’s public health system and medical equipment is scanty; despite that, a national daily yesterday reported, quoting an evaluation report by the Implementation Monitoring and Evaluation Division (IMED) of the Ministry of Planning, that in the first 10 months of the current fiscal year of 2022-23, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare has spent only 32.22 per cent of its total Tk 12,189.77 crore allocation in the revised budget.

It was also reported that in the revised budget, the health services division received of Tk 9,793.96 crore and the health education and family welfare division Tk 2,395.81 crore, but as was the case in the past years, these two divisions of the Health Ministry will not be able to spend the unutilised funds in the last two months of the current fiscal.

So, here we are! People in Bangladesh have no dearth of complaints against the public health service, often poor allocation of funds for the health sector in the national budget is also criticised, but the reality on the ground is even this inadequate health budget largely remains unutilised. Still, the amount of money that was spent from the allocation was also most likely not spent not duly for the service of patients, because there is widespread allegation of corruption in the health sector.

It is really unacceptable that one the one hand health sector is beset with multifarious problems, but the money that can be used to solve these problems remain unutilised. The obvious is the conclusion: the responsibilities of this crucial ministry are not being delivered because of the ineptness of the people involved. They take the taxpayers’ money as salaries and facilities; in return they do not give the required service to the nation.