Developing advanced healthcare facilities at home

With fewer than one hospital bed available per 1,000 patients and still fewer doctors to attend them, the need for more hospital beds and healthcare professionals in the country has been a long-felt demand. Yet, progress in this important sector has been limited so far. That explains why before the July 2024 uprising, a large number of people would visit only India every year and spend worth around half a billion US dollar for treatment purpose. In this way, huge sums of hard-earned foreign currencies would be spent outside the country. If hospitals with advanced treatment facilities could be made available within the country, then the number of outbound patients could be significantly reduced and, at the same time, a lot of foreign currency could be saved. So, Bangladesh cannot waste any opportunity to strengthen and expand its domestic capacity to serve the growing number of patients across the country. Against this backdrop, the report that the proposed 1000-bed Bangladesh-China Friendship Hospital to be set up in the northern district of Nilphamari, which is part of a series of China-funded healthcare projects to be built in the country, is now in an advanced stage of planning and approval is no doubt a welcome development.

A report carried in this newspaper recently informs that the proposed hospital project  is being reviewed by the relevant government body for its finalisation. Fund worth Tk22.2 billion has been earmarked for the project as China grant. An additional amount from the government's own sources will also, as reported, go into implementation of the project. Once complete, the hospital would serve around 3,000 people, while its capacity will allow admission of 1,000 patients every day. What is further gratifying about the proposed hospital project is that, as planned, consulting fees for both outpatients and inpatients would be affordable for the common people. However, the cost of especialised services would be somewhat higher, but still within the affordable limit. Notably, the Nilphamari district and the greater Rangpur division of which it is a part, is a less developed region of the country. From that perspective, the implementation of such a large healthcare facility will be of immense service to the region with a population of over 1.7 million. Considering the range of the general and advanced specialised healthcare services the hospital would offer, it will obviously be able to draw medical service-seekers from other parts of the country as well as from abroad. Add to this the medical tourism and all the related activities the project is going to generate. So, it is not purely healthcare service as such, a large-scale project of this type can help initiate multiple economic activities that can create employment opportunities for the local population.

In that case, the general expectation is that sooner the paperwork for the project is completed and activities for the physical infrastructure started, the better for the public.  More such collaborative healthcare facilities are required to be established in the country. The country has numerous privately-run hospitals fitted with advanced medical technologies, many of which boast  highly paid specialist  doctors working on contract from abroad. But only affluent section of society can afford their service. So, building more such expensive private hospitals won't be in the interest of the common people.  

Hopefully, foreign-financed hospital projects like the China-backed one in Nilphamari would go a long way in meeting the demand gap for low-cost but advanced healthcare service in the country.