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Public specialists on Saturday called for more budget allocation for health sector in the upcoming 2024-25 fiscal as the country is witnessing an alarming surge in the deaths from non-communicable diseases (NCDs).
The budgetary allocation to combat NCDs is significantly inadequate, they said, adding that medicines of diseases like hypertension, diabetes could not be available in the public upazila healthcares.
The condition could further deteriorate the health status of the country and those NCDs go uncontrolled among patients, they feared.
They made the recommendations at a webinar titled "Budgetary Allocation to Combat NCDs: Bangladesh Perspective" held on the occasion of World Health Day.
The webinar was organised by the research and advocacy organisation PROGGA (Knowledge for Progress) with support from the Global Health Advocacy Incubator (GHAI).
This year, World Health Day was being observed under the theme "My Health, My Right".
However, the budgetary allocation dedicated to combating NCDs is alarmingly low, comprising only 4.2 per cent of the total health budget. It was further revealed at the webinar that despite the World Health Organization's recommendation for countries to allocate at least 15 per cent of their total budget for the health sector, Bangladesh allocated only 5 per cent of its total budget to healthcare in the 2023-24 fiscal year.
Hypertension, diabetes, heart disease, stroke, cancer, kidney diseases and respiratory diseases are responsible for 70 per cent of total deaths in Bangladesh.
A number of risk factors, including unhealthy eating habits, excess sodium or salt intake, tobacco use, lack of physical labor, air pollution, etc. are at play behind the spike in the prevalence of NCDs, said the webinar.
The government's health budgetary support is one of the lowest in the WHO South-East Asia region.
Prof Dr Sohel Reza Choudhury, head of the Department of Epidemiology and Research at National Heart Foundation, says the government is yet well-prepared to deliver those NCDs medicines at the government healthcares at upazila level as the number of patients are out of government estimation.
"Over 0.3 million people are registered with the government upazila health centres and the government could not provide medicines of NCDs like hypertension, diabetes to patients of mostly low-income group people," he said.
If the situation remains unchanged those patients' diseases can go out of control, he fears. "The prevalence of non-communicable diseases can be controlled to a great extent by reducing the risk of hypertension alone. It is crucial to ensuring necessary allocation in the upcoming budget to implement the decision to include anti-hypertensive medicines on the drug list of community clinics along with reducing the amount of salt intake among the public," he added.
Muhammad Ruhul Quddus, Bangladesh Country Lead of GHAI, said research shows that investing Tk 1 for hypertension screening and medicines can yield an overall benefit worth Tk 18.
"Therefore, sustainable funding for this sector must be ensured in addition to increasing the budget allocation to safeguard public health," he continued.
Dr Laila Akhter, director of Bangladesh Food Safety Authority (BFSA), was also present at the webinar as one of the discussants.
The keynote presentation was delivered by PROGGA Coordinator Sadia Galiba Prova and the webinar was chaired by PROGGA Executive Director ABM Zubair.
People of different professions from different regions of the country participated in the webinar.