To ensure quality healthcare for a large section of the Bangladeshi people, private sector healthcare needs to be standardised and a healthcare budget needs to be implemented.
In addition, to protect domestic private sector healthcare endeavours from the influx of foreign capital, proper legislation needs to be implemented while the private sector itself needs to ensure that consumers will get the service they pay for.
These were the views expressed by the participants of a roundtable discussion arranged on occasion of the World Health Day 2014 styled “Private medical services: Scopes and opportunities”. The discussion was organised by the Dhaka Tribune in tandem with Ayesha Memorial Specialised Hospital yesterday afternoon at the conference hall of Dhaka Tribune’s Panthapath office.
“It is next to impossible for the government to provide proper healthcare for the humongous population of 160 million. Stimulating growth for the public sector has to be the way to go. In this regard, the government needs to implement a health budget,” one of the speakers said.
“In most cases, patients don’t have an idea of how much a certain service may cost them. This figure varies from hospital to hospital. The industry therefore needs to standardise prices of services.”
On the rapid growth and success of telemedicine, speakers opined: “It has catered for the marginalised people in the rural region with specialist opinions. Besides, we are building disease profiles and health statistics for the country.”
The participants, however, asked for legal protection from the influx of foreign capital, saying the domestic private sector runs the risk of being eaten up by large global players.
Nearly Tk5-7 billion is already exported out of Bangladesh as many patients prefer to treat themselves in India, Thailand or Singapore, speakers said. They agreed that the best solution to this lies in upgrading the healthcare system, improving the quality of service and ensuring that patients, at the very least, are provided with the services they pay for.
Fazilatun Nessa, MP; Dr Ahmed al Kabir, chairman, Rupali Bank; Priti Chakrabarty and Dr Ashis Kumar Chakraborty from Ayesha Memorial Hospital; Dr Arif Mahmud, Apollo Hospitals; Dr Dabir Uddin Ahmed, United Hospitals; Dr Reza bin Zayed, Telemedicine Working Group of Bangladesh; Debashish Roy, head of CSR, Grameenphone; and Shahriar Karim, chief news editor at the Dhaka Tribune attended the programme.
The discussion was chaired by Shahidul Alam Chowdhury, planning editor at the Dhaka Tribune.