Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen

Healthcare expenditure is one of the key reasons of household hardship in Bangladesh, according to a report released yesterday.

It said more than 60 percent of the nation's total spending on healthcare comes from the private expenditure of the poor.

Bangladesh Health Watch (BHW), a civil society platform for monitoring the health sector, released its annual report of 2011 “Moving towards Universal Health Coverage” at Brac Centre in the capital yesterday.

Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen, Health Minister AFM Ruhal Haque and Finance Minister AMA Muhith were present at the ceremony, among others.

The government at present spends $16 per capita a year where the minimum allocation recommended by the World Health Organisation is $24.

Speaking as the guest of honour at the report unveiling ceremony, Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen said everyone is entitled to equal access to quality healthcare.

Referring to the efficient public healthcare system in Canada and Italy, he said there is much to learn from the European experience of delivering medical service with kindness, not for cash.

From 1979 to 2004, China moved from the policy of state ensuring universal healthcare, an act which dramatically affected the health sector by decreasing the life expectancy of Chinese people, said Sen, adding that the country then returned to public healthcare by the state.

Presenting the key findings of the report, BHW member Syed Masud Ahmed said the government's fund allocation in public health service is inequitable need wise and in most of the cases rendered ineffective.

Currently, only 3.5 percent of GDP, which is much lower than most of the neighboring countries, is spent for public healthcare, he said.

Health and Family Welfare Minister Prof AFM Ruhal Haque said dearth of resources is what mainly impeding the deliverance of universal healthcare.

However, according to Prof Rounaq Jahan, convener of the BHW advisory group, good governance is what matters the most to ensure proper public health service, not the resource.

The lack of fund should not be the only excuse, she said.

The health minister referred to a data that showed that each year two million -- almost 80 percent -- pregnant women get delivered by midwives at home. Of those, 11,000 mothers die while giving birth, he said, and it is not possible to get all the delivery done in hospitals with the existing capacity.

Finance Minister Muhith said apart from resource crunch, there are other reasons for the inadequate expenditure in the public healthcare sector. He also highlighted the success in family planning, immunisation and diarrhoeal diseases in his speech.

Source: The Daily Star