Speakers at a virtual workshop on Wednesday stressed the need for increasing budgetary allocation to effectively control the growing prevalence of non-communicable diseases.
They said non-communicable diseases (NCDs) are responsible for the majority of deaths in the country but the budget allocated to fight NCDs remains alarmingly insufficient.
The workshop for journalists titled “Budgetary Allocation to Combat NCDs: Bangladesh Perspective” was organised by a research and advocacy organization, PROGGA (Knowledge for Progress), with support from Global Health Advocacy Incubator (GHAI).
Journalists from different media outlets working in Sylhet participated in the workshop.
In the workshop, it was said 70% of total deaths in Bangladesh are attributed to non-communicable diseases such as heart diseases, stroke, cancer, kidney diseases, respiratory diseases, diabetes, and hypertension. However, the budgetary allocation dedicated to combat NCDs is only 4.2 percent of the total health budget.
Despite the World Health Organization's recommendation for countries to allocate at least 15% of their total budget to the health sector, Bangladesh allocated only 5% of its total budget to healthcare in the fiscal year 2023-24.
The government's health budgetary support is one of the lowest in the WHO South-East Asia region, said speakers.
The government has several policy obligations to tackle non-communicable diseases including the goal of reducing premature deaths from NCDs by one third within 2030, which requires increased budget allocation for this sector, they said.
Muhammad Ruhul Quddus, Bangladesh Country Lead of GHAI, Dr Shamim Jubayer, Program Manager, Hypertension Control Program, National Heart Foundation Hospital and Research Institute and ABM Zubair, Executive Director of PROGGA were present at the workshop as discussants.
The keynote presentation was delivered by PROGGA’s Coordinator Sadia Galiba Prova, said a press release.