Bangladesh Government to expand Health Insurance for People below Poverty Line
The government announced during its budget speech last week that it will expand health insurance for people living below the poverty line. The expansion comes as part of a programme called "Shashtho Shurokkha Karmashuchi" (SSK) formulated to finance expansion of...
Bangladesh’s Health Budget during the Pandemic
Bangladesh has had less than 1% share of the annual budget for the health sector for over a decade now. The Covid 19 crisis has only made it more important to invest more in health services, infrastructure and personnel. This opinion piece by Dr Fahmida Khatun gives...
Budget FY 2021-22: Covid-19 vaccination to get priority
Keeping the mass vaccination in mind, the revenue target for the next fiscal has been set Tk 389,078 crore, which is 11.02% of the GDP, according to the finance ministry and National Board of Revenue (NBR) sources. There will be Tk 10,000 crore special allocation for...
Bangladesh Prime Minister assures adequate supply of Covid 19 vaccines irrespective of procurement costs
Bangladesh PM Sheikh Hasina has assured that her government will procure COVID-19 vaccines at any cost, and has also allocated financial help for marginalized families. An amount of over 1,500 crore Bangladeshi Takas has been allocated to ease the sufferings of...
Bangladeshis’ woes deepen amid COVID 19 and lack of health coverage
Despite having one of the world’s fastest-growing economies, Bangladesh is lagging far behind in providing standard health care services to its over 166 million people, which is deepening their woes amid the coronavirus pandemic. Their budget for the health sector is...
Financial accessibility issues to COVID treatments noted in Bangladesh
A recent study conducted by the Health Economics Unit of the Bangladesh Ministry of Health highlights cost differences between treatments of COVID patients in public versus private facilities. For example, while the average cost of ICU treatment in the public sector...
Tobacco ‘sin’ tax in Bangladesh earmarked for health
In 2015 the Bangladesh government began to levy a 1 percent Health Development Surcharge (HDS) for all tobacco products, an amount of over BDT 600 Cr (~$71M) per year. The funds collected were intended to support key government programs including tobacco...
Vaccine Purchase: WB to provide $500m more
The World Bank has agreed to provide $500 million to Bangladesh in additional financing to buy Covid-19 vaccines. The main objective of the WB's additional financing for this project is -- vaccination of 31 percent of the total population of the country through...
Rohingya refugees and local Bangladeshis benefit from inclusive COVID-19 response
At the beginning of 2021, the Bangladesh government began the rollout of a national COVID-19 vaccination plan, with the first vaccinations taking place in the capital at the end of January. Over the next month, more than three million Bangladeshis received their first...
Bangladesh’s journey with health in the past 50 years
Bangladesh has one of the best health networks in the public sector. However, shortage and skill-mix imbalance of human resources, limitations in equipment, medicines and other supplies deter obtaining adequate benefits from these resources. Public expenditure on...
Health Financing in Bangladesh: Scarcity and its impacts
As Bangladesh shows a decreasing trend in healthcare budget over the years, the lack of healthcare services to the vast majority of its financially disadvantaged population becomes more and more evident. The government has consistently been allocating about 5% of the...
Analyzing Healthcare Budget Allocation: Effective Utilization and Shortcomings
The budget put forward by the Bangladesh Parliament has allocated a sizable amount to healthcare, which is a BDT 73 billion increase over the previous fiscal year. However, despite the increase of the allocation from the previous year of 23.44% and the...
A case for building a stronger health care system in Bangladesh
The havoc that COVID-19 wreaked on Bangladesh is typical of the effect it had on South Asian countries in general in that it exposed the acute lack of investment- financial, infrastructural and in terms of human resources in the public healthcare system. Considering...
Bangladesh WHO update on HF activities -/12/2014
Here an update on current activities received from the WHO country office in Bangladesh: 1. Preparations of a draft law on social health protection, so that institutions could be established to run an insurance pilot program, and recruit manpower to run a regulatory...
6th HFRTG meeting and subsequent DP Group meeting – Aug/Sep 2014
Please find below the minutes of the sixth meeting of the Health Financing Resource Task Group (HFRTG) held on 28 Aug 2014, chaired by the Secretary, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. 2014_08_28_Bangladesh_minutes_6th_meeting_HFRTG And an update from the...