More than 90 per cent of people in the country thinks that the government must contain the ‘extremely high’ expenses for affording medicines, diagnostics, surgery and doctor’s fee by setting limits on their prices, according to the public opinion survey on health sector reform 2025.
The final survey report, prepared by the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics, was published on Thursday.
The report revealed that more than 97 per cent of the respondents said they wanted fixed retail prices of the medicines, diagnostics and surgery and doctor’s fees.
The report also said that patients aged between 18 and 29 received health services the most compared to the other age ranges.
Among the respondents, 61.6 per cent said that recruitment, transfer, promotion, budget management and development plans for the health facilities must be done and taken by local actors instead of the central government.
‘Comprehensively, people support decentralisation of the administrative jobs in the health sector,’ the report said.
Among the respondents, 98.7 per cent voted for a round-the-clock emergency ambulance service connecting the country’s all public and private hospitals.
According to the report, 62.1 per cent of the respondents said they availed medical treatment from public hospitals and health complexes while 61.3 per cent received the service from the private-run health facilities.
Respondents in the Chattogram, Dhaka and Barishal divisions said that they were mostly dependent on private health facilities.
Service seekers in Rajshahi and Rangpur divisions were the least dependent on private health facilities, said the report.Â
Among the surveyed health service seekers, 68.5 per cent of the respondents said that they were dissatisfied with the services of city health centres.
According to the report, 63.4 per cent of the respondents said that the medical colleges should be autonomous institutions.
A similar percentage of the respondents said that the health sector entities should run as autonomous bodies.
