Understaffed health service

THE situation of the public health service and the picture of health centres as a result, as revealed in a recent report in this newspaper reads rather dismal. The situation has been compounded mainly by shortage of almost 20 percent of the authorised manpower. The state of affairs hardly lives up to the government's commitment to take healthcare service nearer to the people and make it accessible to the greater majority of them, more so to those in rural areas.
It boggles one's mind to see that there is a deficit of more than 4000 doctors and double that number of nurses and health assistants. That, coupled with the deficiency at all levels of support staff, is severely hindering public health service all across the country. As it is, the doctor to patient ratio in Bangladesh is so heavily skewed against the patients that further distortions in the situation, as the present shortfall has shown, is bound to take the situation to a breaking point.
Given the fact that corruption is the root cause that has halted recruitment leading to the present state, what we find hard to comprehend is that there is very little palpable effort to resolve the problem. Can the situation remain hostage to the greed of handful of people sitting in the health ministry in Dhaka?
We feel that there is merit in the suggestion that recruitment should be decentralised to the district level. This should pose no problem provided strict oversight of the procedure is maintained all the time across the system. And we see no reason why there should be need for administrative and financial approval for recruitment to those posts that have been already approved by the government.
It is not surprising that the current situation has not only added to the public woes as far as their health is concerned their suffering has been aggravated also by corruption bred by shortage of manpower.
Fresh recruitment based on merit brooks no delay given that the current authorised manpower in the sector is already far less than what has been deemed necessary for the country.