Formulate pro-poor health policy

The 3-day seminar titled 'The future of health services: Who will live and who will die' has been organised jointly by Health Action International Asia Pacific (HAIAP) and Gonoswasthaya Kendra (GK) at Savar near Dhaka.

Health and drug experts from 19 Asia-Pacific countries are attending the seminar to discuss a number of issues including national and international health and drug policies, health status and future actions.

Speaking at the inaugural session, the experts highlighted that subsidised services in health sector which are meant for the poor, in reality tend to provide greater benefits to the well-off depriving the disadvantaged groups.

Top 20 percent of the population utilises over 26 percent of the total financial subsidies provided through government health expenditure, said HAIAP Adviser and Co-ordinator Dr K Balasubramaniam referring to a World Bank report that collected data from 21 developing countries including Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka and Vietnam.

"Even primary healthcare subsidies, which are believed to be directed to the rural poor, are used more by the rich than the poor," he said in his keynote presentation.

According to The Human Development Report 2005, more than one billion people of the globe lack access to safe water and 2.6 billion lack access to improved sanitation while four people die from malaria alone every two minutes, three of whom are children.

Vaccine-preventable illness- measles, diphtheria and tetanus- accounts for another 2-3 million childhood deaths.

Five lakh women who die each year from pregnancy related causes belonged to poor countries.

Referring to the failure of international system, Dr Balasubramaniam said excuses are heard that it is too difficult and expensive to reach the poor, but it is an inbuilt discrimination against the poor.

"We are very badly betrayed by the health profession which has become so commercial," he added.

Highlighting that the existing health policies mainly benefit the rich, HAIAP Governing Council Chairperson Dr Prem Chandran John said, "We are not deciding who will die or who will live. The rulers and economists have already decided it. Meanwhile, the poor have become poorer and weaker."

In his welcome speech, Dr Prem called for formulating a guideline saying that the agenda for better health lies in the hands of the people and peoples' organisations, but the governments and international agencies have, by and large, failed to meet the peoples' needs.

In his inaugural speech, Health and Family Welfare Minister Dr Khandaker Mosharraf Hossain highlighted a number of successes in the health sector, which he said, have placed Bangladesh at a better position than many other South Asian nations.

He said issues concerning health for the poor were also emphasised in the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP), which is guided by the Millennium Development Goals.

Prof Abul Qasem Chowdhury, vice-chancellor of Gonobishwabidyalay, presided over the session.