One in three community clinic buildings in disrepair

Infrastructure at more than one-third of the 14,467 community clinics, which serve 4.9 lakh people daily, has become risky and now requires replacement or repair to continue providing healthcare, said officials of the Community Clinic Health Support Trust.

Of them, 3,136 clinics -- or 22 percent -- are classified as high risk and need immediate replacement as some have broken roofs while others have different parts damaged.

The buildings that house 5,080 of the clinics, which provide primary healthcare and 22 types of medicine, are found to be risky, Monzoor KH Uddin, an architect who works with the trust to prepare a model for the clinics, told a seminar yesterday.

Seeking anonymity, another official said that out of the 5,080 clinics, 3,136 were found highly risky and 1,944 moderately risky. Highly risky buildings need to be replaced while those at moderate risk require repairs.

The trust is preparing a project for repairing and constructing new buildings, and the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) is expected to fund the project, he said.

The infrastructure problem has been compounded by a disruption of medicine supply at community clinics over the past year, leaving thousands deprived of necessary medicines.

The supply of medicine got severely disrupted after the sectoral programme, under which funding for community clinic medicine comes from, ended in June 2024 and the interim government could not initiate a project to continue the supply of medicines.

The trust officials, however, said it has already supplied 15,000 boxes of medicines to the clinics and that the medicine supply will be normal soon. The organisation is planning to construct 516 more community clinics, and Japan is expected to finance those, officials said.

The issues came to the fore at a seminar titled "Media Participation in Grassroots-Level Health Services", held at the Bangladesh Medical Research Council auditorium in the capital and organised by the Trust.

Asked about the disruption of the medicine supply, Md Akhtaruzzaman, managing director of the Trust, said they have already procured medicines worth Tk 120 crore from Essential Drugs Company and 15,000 boxes have already reached the community clinics.

The rest of the medicines will arrive within a week, he said.

"Everyone will receive medicines by next week -- we have the budget and will produce medicines worth Tk 200 crore more," he added.

However, two officials of the Trust said it may take one month to get the medicine supply back to normal. They received a lump-sum allocation for procuring medicines as the approval of the project is taking time, said one of them, wishing not to be named.

Earlier, in his presentation,Asif Mahmud, director (field administration) of the Trust, the clinics have been used as the first point of contact for poor and destitute people at the grassroots.

Apart from giving preventive advice, the clinics provide 22 types of medicines.

The clinics are being used as the outreach centres for expanded Programme on Immunisation, the national programme that provides routine vaccinations for children and mothers.

The Health Service Reform Commission has given several recommendations to improve its services, and the Trust has already devised some short- and long-term plan in this regard, he said.

Apart from updating the list of medicines, they would supply necessary equipment like blood pressure machines, weight machines, glucometers on the basis of demand, he added.

Nasir Uddin, director (administration), Geeta Rani Devi, acting director (training) of the Trust, and SM Rezauk Islam, a JICA consultant working with the Trust, were present at the seminar.