General people in rural areas are being deprived of proper medical care due to the absence of doctors and lack of medicines at sub-health centres at the union parishad level.
Most centres do not have their own buildings, while doctors prefer seeing patients at upazila health complexes.
There are six upazilas and 65 UPs in Kushtia district, with a population of around 2 million. Each upazila has a health complex, and only 26 UPs have sub-health centres.
Eight of these sub-health facilities operate under the Sadar Upazila.
On paper, Daulatpur upazila has six union sub-health centres, among which one in Insaf Nagar fell victim to river erosion years ago. Apart from this, only two UPs under Bheramara have sub-health centres.
A similar scene can also be witnessed in Mirpur, where there are 13 UPs. But only Chillia and Amla UPs have sub-health centres. Although there are doctors at the centre in Chillia, the post of a doctor has been vacant for two months in Amla.
There are 11 UPs under Kumarkhali Upazila, of which eight have sub-health centres.
Abdul Aleem, a statistician at the Kushtia Civil Surgeon Office, admitted the poor state of the health care facilities in rural areas.
Dhaka TribuneSarwar Hossain, a farmer hailing from a village in Mirpur, said that the sub-health centres provide primary health care to the rural people. There is a doctor at their local sub-health centre who was irregular at the facility before, but recently he is coming to the facility regularly.
Md Rabiul Islam, the principal of Sagarkhali Model Degree College, told Dhaka Tribune that the people in the locality only get some basic health care at the Chillia sub-health centre. Moreover, not all the medicines prescribed by doctors are available in nearby pharmacies or clinics.
Md Atiar Rahman, pharmacist at the Chillia sub-health centre, admitted the situation, and said that only 30 to 32 varieties of medicines are available at his pharmacy. He said they get new stocks every three months, but the situation worsens when the number of patients increases.
SM Manjurul Alam, a doctor at the centre, said that the facility gets medicine only four times a year, which is not enough to serve all the patients. “With such a shortage in manpower and medicines, we can only provide basic health care services to our patients,” he said.
Mirpur Upazila Health and Family Planning Officer Dr Pijush Kumar Saha told the Dhaka Tribune that they informed the authorities regarding the shortage of manpower in local healthcare facilities.
Palash Kumar Das, a student, said that although there is an acute shortage of medicine in rural areas, still such health facilities play a key role in the overall healthcare of rural people.
Kushtia Civil Surgeon Dr HM Anwarul Islam said many centres do not have their own buildings. “These centres will get their buildings if the government allocates necessary funds.”
