Continued decline in investment blamed for the country’s waning healthcare services

AN acute shortage of doctors, nurses, and other health workers, specially trained for handling critical patients, has been badly affecting the quality of service in intensive care units across the country.

Speakers at a seminar said despite this shortage, the absence of an organogram in the government health service has left many such doctors unassigned to the ICUs.

To overcome the situation effectively, stakeholders unanimously stressed the urgency of creating more critical care medicine specialists.

Due to the shortage of anesthesiologists, surgeons, and gynaecologists in many district-level hospitals often cannot perform surgeries. Many hospitals have ICUs but they do not have proper oxygen supplies.

There are many hospitals that have ICUs but do not have proper oxygen supplies. Over the past four years, according to data released by the Directorate General of Health Services, annual dengue deaths increased twofold and hospitalisation nearly four folds compared with the total dengue deaths and hospitalisation over the 19 years since 2000.

The dengue prevalence was the result of the government’s failure to control mosquitoes.

A continued decline in public health investment was blamed for declining healthcare services and pushing millions into poverty every year, but the government ignored calls for increasing the investment.

In 2022, only five per cent of the national budget was set aside for health, representing one of the lowest health investments in the world. The per capita health expenditure in Bangladesh is just $45, compared with $58 in Nepal, $73 in India, $103 in Bhutan, and $157 in Sri Lanka.

Experts said Covid-19 has shown our vulnerability in the critical care arrangement.

Although the problem cannot be solved overnight, we should have an action plan considering future health emergencies.

The biggest blow to public health, however, came from drug prices.

Corruption riddled the entire health system, where from minister to VC, medical officers to peons, suppliers to auditors all are involved in corruption to fail the sector.

And not surprisingly their objective is achieved, resulting in booming private medical facilities and Indian hospitals’ popularity among middle-class people.