Health sector gets Tk 8,129cr

With a view to ensuring quality healthcare for all, the government has proposed to allocate a total of Tk Tk 8,129 crore for the health and family welfare ministry.
Placing the proposed national budget for 2010-11 in parliament, Finance Minister AMA Muhith highlighted various action plans being implemented in this fiscal for the health sector such as establishment of community clinics and nursing and other institutes, upgrade of the district and upazila level hospitals to 50-bed and 250-bed ones respectively, and recruitment of health assistants.
The health ministry gets 6.2 percent of the total budget for fiscal 2010-11. The non-development sector gets Tk 4,656 crore while the development sector gets Tk 3,473 crore.
The allocation for the health sector was Tk 6,998 crore in the current fiscal. The amount allocated for the next fiscal is Tk 1,231 crore higher than the previous fiscal, but the sector gets the 9th priority in the budget.
Terming the allocation inadequate, the health experts said this budget would bring nothing new to this sector.
"Most of the money will be spent on salaries of staffs and the remaining on construction work like establishing community clinics. However, it would not bring any qualitative change to the sector," said former president of Bangladesh Medical Association and President of Health Rights Movement National Committee Prof Rashid-e-Mahbub.
"The government should consider bringing about reforms in the health sector and allocate accordingly," he said.
He also said the finance minister has just mentioned how many hospitals were upgraded, but this does not ensure that people are getting quality health services.
Moreover, if money is not allocated for increasing facilities for the doctors at upazila and district level, the doctors would not go there, he said.
The health experts also said that the government is considering establishing community clinics for every 6,000 people. On the other hand, around two crore people living in urban areas would remain neglected.
If the allocation is less than 3 percent of the total GDP, it cannot be termed an effective, they said.
Farida Akhter, co-convener of Health Movement, said the health sector did not get due importance, although the size of the total budget is huge.
The budget did not consider overall health service system and the allocation for this sector is not adequate, she said.
The top ten projects under the health ministry are physical facilities development, essential service delivery, family planning field services delivery, improved hospital service management, national nutrition programme, clinical contraceptive services delivery, maternal child and reproductive health services delivery, communicable disease control, National AIDS/ STD Programme and Safe blood transmission, Tuberculosis and Leprosy Control.