Public or govt. health sector to lead and revamp the community clinics.
There is a need of public investment though we also need the private sector. However, we can’t fully depend on the private sector for health, education and other essential services (e.g., electricity, water, physical and electronic communication). The universal truth is the private sector work for profit while the state or public sector work for public welfare as by the mandate from constitution.
Eighteen thousand community clinics are established in union with huge hope in the beginning. Now we know the deplorable situation of them. An Upazila Health Complex hardly has sufficient budget for even cleaning the compound. Sometimes they might have an ambulance, but hardly have any budget to run and maintain it. Let’s give good amount of maintenance budget to Upazila Health Administration with appropriate system of decentralization and authority. No more bureaucratic tangle at least in health administration, maybe we can think to have a reform commission in health system on urgent system.
Community clinics should have minimum facilities to accommodate a graduate doctor. Now government has announced a bit of good salary facilities for doctors so that they can work in their own district or upazila, but not much of physical facilities for their accommodation both in upazila and union level. In upazila level there are some facilities but such a residential facilities should also be available in union level.
Even in normal times the doctors suffer from insecurity at their work as sometimes the relatives of the patients take law in their hands. Highest level of protection is the basic rights of doctors. Let us respect to medical professionals and listen to them. Let us demand to enhance the budget drastically. While I am writing this article in four part, Honorable Prime Minister has declared insurance for the doctors, in fact it is commendable.
Let’s have more appointment of doctors, nurses, medical technicians and medical assistants in our public / government health system. Always we seen news on vacancy, let’s have a news, we have 10 % surplus of medical professionals. Let us have more post-graduation facilities for young medical graduates, we do not want to listen monopolism in the medical higher education.
Let’s us have our highest investment in our medical professional who is our best army to protect the nation. If we do not take learning from this corona crisis, then from what else we will take learning.
Rezaul Karim Chowdhury, 14th April 2020
