Expanding the Health Workforce: A Path to Better Care
IT is a cause of severe concern that our healthcare system cannot provide quality services with inadequate healthcare workers to meet patients’ needs.
Despite an increase in the number of doctors, nurses and midwives in recent years, the country remains far below the World Health Organisation’s (WHO’s) recommended threshold.
According to a newspaper report published yesterday, the country had only 15.16 doctors, nurses and midwives per 10,000 people in 2025, against the WHO benchmark of 44.5.
The report, quoting the latest WHO data, stated that at the current pace of training and recruitment, this density is projected to reach 31.77 by 2030, leaving a substantial gap of nearly 13 health workers per 10,000 people.
To match the country’s growing healthcare needs, the government therefore needs a comprehensive workforce plan.
Experts said hospitals function best when they have doctors, nurses, and allied health professionals, such as medical technologists, in an appropriate balance.
The recommended ratio is one doctor to three nurses and midwives, and five allied health professionals.
However, Bangladesh has less than one nurse or midwife for every doctor and fewer than two allied health workers.
To them, this gap is hampering the functioning of healthcare facilities, even though the number of health professionals has increased over the past few years.
The latest data show that the growth has failed to keep pace with rising demand and remains uneven across different categories of health workers.
At the same time, they also think the health system must meet maternal and child health needs and tackle communicable diseases such as measles and tuberculosis, while dengue continues to drive thousands of patients to hospitals every year.
Besides, quality services cannot be ensured if we do not have enough healthcare providers.
The crisis is even more acute in terms of specialists, with patients often waiting months for appointments.
Some specialists see hundreds of patients and work late into the night.
It is to be noted that as of 2025, Bangladesh had 141,700 registered MBBS graduates and 116,194 available for service — both figures representing an increase of about 51 percent from 2019.
The number of registered nurses nearly doubled to 107,047 over the same period.
The combined density of doctors, nurses, and midwives also rose to 15.16 per 10,000 people last year from 8.3 in 2019, according to the health ministry’s data.
We think the government’s plan to expand upazila health complexes to 151 beds each cannot succeed without adequate doctors, nurses, medical technologists, equipment and operating budgets.
We need a balanced, adequately staffed workforce capable of meeting patients’ needs at every level of healthcare.
