INTERN doctors’ work abstentions across the country have once again exposed long-standing disputes over allowances and workplace conditions in the health sector. Intern doctors in several districts continued an indefinite work abstention for the second consecutive day on June 8 which affected services in emergency departments, wards and outpatient units. They have...
A MOTHER in Kurigram should not have to travel to Dhaka for treatment that ought to be available at a nearby health centre. Yet every day, thousands of Bangladeshis make similar journeys. They crowd into buses, borrow money from relatives, and spend days away from work and family simply to access services that should exist much closer to home...
MORE than 480 children have died and thousands more have fallen ill in Bangladesh’s measles outbreak this year. At the same time, the president has been travelling abroad for medical consultations. These are not unrelated events. Read side by side, they expose the deepest fault line in Bangladesh’s public health system: one pathway for those who can purchase safety...
WHEN a DNA test can reveal not only ancestry but also how a person’s body responds to specific medications, healthcare begins to shift from generalisation to individualisation. This is the promise of pharmacogenetic testing, an emerging field within precision medicine that studies how genetic differences influence drug response. It marks a departure from traditional...
THIS article reflects on the primary healthcare infrastructure that exists at the peripheral level in the rural and urban areas of Bangladesh, and reviews the recommendations made in the erstwhile Health Sector Reform Commission report, submitted on May 5, 2025, to the then interim government, along with additional comments and suggestions for managing primary healthcare in Bangladesh...
THE primary healthcare system of urban Bangladesh is beset with a multitude of complexities due to rapid urbanisation and a lack of adequate infrastructure, particularly in primary healthcare. According to the World Health Organisation, rapid urbanisation is the most significant global trend in the 21st century, exerting substantial impact on the healthcare system of...
Canadian police Wednesday identified the 18-year-old who carried out a mass shooting in a remote mining town, as authorities investigate the suspect’s mental health and previous interactions with police and health care providers...
Health workers under the Urban Primary Health Care Services Delivery Project on Wednesday staged demonstrations in Rajshahi city, demanding payment of long-overdue salaries and the current month’s wages...
National professor AK Azad Khan, president of the Bangladesh Diabetic Society, who headed the health sector reform commission, tells Sadiqur Rahman about the state of the health sector, issues of budget priorities, primary health care as a constitutional right, governance reforms, decentralisation, research culture and...
BANGLADESHIS spend an estimated $5 billion on medical treatment abroad every year. Speakers at a seminar that the Dhaka Chamber of Commerce and Industry organised on strengthening confidence in the healthcare system and the need for quality assurance in Dhaka on December 13 said that such a situation resulted from persistent structural gaps that affect...
THE Health and Morbidity Status Survey 2025 paints a bleak picture of public health. Conducted by the Bureau of Statistics that interviewed 1,89,986 individuals across 47,040 households in November–December 2024, the survey reports high morbidity, heavy out-of-pocket health expenditure, extensive reliance on over-the-counter medicines and an exponential rise...
THE prison system continues to be plagued by a paucity of medical treatment facilities. In the past four years, 1,300 prisoners have died in jail custody — 839 in hospital and 461 on the way to hospital, official data show. The figures show that 291 inmates died in jail custody in 2021, 213 in 2022, 367 in 2023, 306 in 2024 and 123 in the first 11 months of 2025. There is a...
Defending champions Mohammedan Sporting Club earned a 3-2 win over arch-rivals Abahani Limited as the Bangladesh Football League resumed after a one-month break with a new title sponsor – United Health Care...
BANGLADESH stands at a critical moment in its public health journey. For decades, the health system has been heavily skewed, treating illnesses after they appear, while prevention and health promotion remain significantly underinvested. The situation is worsened by a fragmented and often non-functional primary health care system in most rural areas, where...
AN ACUTE shortage of human resources and essential facilities at healthcare institutions in rural areas, especially at upazila and district public hospitals, shows the systemic neglect that has rendered rural health services inadequate. The situation also disproportionately burdens the poor and low-income people as they primarily depend on these hospitals. Ill-equipped...
Standard Chartered Bangladesh and icddr,b have signed a three-year agreement to implement a transformative project to improve reproductive health care for women and adolescent girls in six remote regions of Bangladesh...
IT IS time to embrace a new era of medical science in which treatments are not based on a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach but are tailored to a person’s genetic makeup. Personalised medicine, based on pharmacogenomics, the study of the effect of genes on drug response, has the potential to transform health care in Bangladesh. The use of personalised medicine...
A SOUND referral and back-referral system in health care potentially has several merits. It can ensure equitable access to specialised health care. It can optimise the use of resources. It can improve patient outcomes. It can also enhance coordination between levels of health care. This is, therefore, a welcome move that the health-sector reforms commission is set to...
UNIVERSAL health coverage aims to provide everyone with essential healthcare services without financial strain. However, despite global pledges to achieve universal health coverage by 2030, more than half of the world’s population still lacks access to basic health services. The Health Care Financing Strategy 2012...
ADVOCACY for initiating a general practitioner-based primary health care system, practised in the United Kingdom and in many former British colonies, looks quite rife in Bangladesh whereas the financing avenue urged for the same is the social health insurance-based model, known also as the Bismarck model, initiated in Germany in 1883. The...
LAW and order go hand in hand to ensure justice and well-being of society, to maintain a balance of power, to limit excessive authority that infringes on others’ basic freedom and to uphold basic rights for the vulnerable. While the law includes punishment by suspending certain fundamental human rights of prisoners to serve the greater purpose, it is never...
IN DEVELOPING nations such as Bangladesh, access to timely and quality health care remains a big challenge for a significant portion of the population. According to a report of the World Bank, Bangladesh suffers from...
HEALTHCARE financing is the backbone of the healthcare system. The other health system components are (1) inputs: (i) human resources for health, (ii) medicine, (iii) technology including diagnostics and (iv) physical infrastructure; (2) processes: (i) leadership or stewardship, (ii) governance and (iii) health management information system, which, however, by...
A HIGH out-of-pocket expenditure, poor access to quality health care, rampant corruption, poorly regulated growth of private healthcare system and low government investment in the health sector have eroded people’s access to health care. The out-of-pocket expenditure has also pushed a large number of households below the poverty line...
The Anti-Corruption Commission on Wednesday filed a case against seven people, including former director general of the Directorate General of Health Services Professor Abul Kalam Azad and JKG Health Care chairperson Sabrina Sharmin Hossain, on charges of cheating people by preparing fake Covid-19 test reports...
NEARLY three decades after the signing of the Chittagong Hill Tracts Accord in 1997, the healthcare system in the region still remains underdeveloped, particularly in the remote areas. In the past few weeks, in three remote villages of Baghaichari upazila in Rangamati, people with symptoms of diarrhoea and fever have been suffering with...
