TITLE:
Health Sector Governance: An Overview of the Legal and Institutional Framework in Bangladesh
AUTHORS:
MD Parvez Sattar
KEYWORDS:
Health Governance, Health Sector in Bangladesh, Legal and Institutional Framework, COVID-19 and Health Governance, Health, Law and Human Rights
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Social Sciences,
Vol.9 No.11,
November
30,
2021
ABSTRACT: The on-going COVID-19 outbreak has unveiled the inadequacy, inefficiency,
mismanagement and deeply ingrained poor governance in the healthcare system of
many national jurisdictions. In addressing these drawbacks and challenges, the
present article examines the organizational structure of the healthcare sector
in Bangladesh with a specific focus on its legal, policy and regulatory
frameworks.
Background information and data used in the article are mostly derived from
desk-based analysis of health sector institutional studies and media reports as
both primary and secondary sources as well as reviewing scholarly texts and
commentaries relating to health sector governance in Bangladesh. Accordingly,
from a critical analysis of an assortment of facts, thoughts and speculations it has been noted that the health sector of the country has been long
struggling due to challenges emanating from deficient national policy
priorities, absence of dynamic stewardship and effective planning and
management, high inequity and low quality in service delivery, lack and abuse of
resources, widespread corruption, inadequacy of health professionals and urban
centred service structure, among others. In addition to mapping out a coherent
and comprehensive legal and regulatory framework for the nation’s healthcare
system, a key recommendation of the paper is on devising short, intermediate
and long-term plans and policies in coordination with other relevant sectors
and agencies-both public and private-ensuring optimum accountability,
transparency and predictability in reorganising a comprehensive sectoral
approach to health service administration and management.