REVIEW OF BANGLADESH HEALTHCARE SYSTEM

Bangladesh health system is still undergoing reforms for more than 47 years after its independence in 1971, and is struggling to build up a broad health care infrastructure in both public and private sector. After adopting the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), Bangladesh achieved great success in MDG4 target of reducing infant mortality by 2015. There was a quick response towards enhancing the other key indicators which are maternal mortality, vaccination coverage, and life-expectancy from several fatal communicable diseases that includes TB, malaria, and Diarrhea. Notwithstanding, heath system of Bangladesh is still facing some difficulty to cope up with some basic challenges in public health issues. For instance, Bangladesh has two Ministries supervising the implementation of health policies and financial support for rural and urban areas, with absence of coordination amongst each other. Moreover, health system has insufficient healthcare workers who are trained with appropriate skills particularly in public health sector, which is further being affected by broad increment in unregulated healthcare suppliers. Additionally, low health care budget distribution from annual Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth by the government and high out of pocket payments to get heath care by the families accompanied by discrimination in healthcare access in rural and urban sectors. Likewise, inefficient health financing mechanism along with other challenges is affecting the universal health coverage targets in Bangladesh. Though, there may be a chance to diminish the healthcare workforce shortage for short time period through expansion of private sector and coordinating the social insurance provider with standard healthcare framework, public health sector still needs to be focused through increased funding and administer private and informal health care provider.