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Draft health policy draws criticism

Mahbuba Zannat
The draft National Health Policy-2009 suggests 'user fee' to be given by the patients for getting health services from public hospitals, which the health experts describe as a blatant attempt to commercialise the health sector.
The health experts strongly criticised the draft health policy saying that imposing the 'user fee' would deprive poor people of their health rights at public hospitals and ultimately force them to seek health services from the private sector.
Public hospitals provide health services without making any profit. So, why does the policy suggest realising user fee, they ask.
Health Minister Prof AFM Ruhal Haque, however, said the main purpose of health policy is to increase access to health services for people and shape up a sustainable quality service system to meet their demand.
The 9th strategy of the health policy says after ensuring poor people's social safety net the government would collect the user
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fee' from all public health care centres as per a guideline to be prepared in this regard.
"The provision of 'user fee' has been kept in the draft policy to increase government's revenue. If the revenue from health sector increases, it would ensure better services for the people,' said Director General of the Directorate General of Health Services Prof Shah Monir Hossain.
The poorest of the poor would get health services free of cost as per the health policy, he said and mentioned that still people are paying charge for the outdoor health services and cabin at the medical college hospitals.
The provision of imposing user fees has invited strong criticism as it would make the health services costlier for the poor people and violate the constitution, which guarantees health rights.
The poor people are not receiving health services free of cost actually rather they have to spend money for medicines and other services as per the doctors' prescriptions. allege the health experts.
"Collecting user fee might be a source of corruption," said Farida Akhter, executive director of UBINIG. a policy advocacy and research organisation.
If the user fee provision is
introduced, people will think that receiving health care services from private clinics will be better than services from public hospitals, she added.
The timeframe of the 'safety net' for the poor people is not clearly mentioned in the draft health policy, said president of the Health Rights Movement Prof Rashid E Mahbub.
He said it would help commercialise the health sector while the poor people would be deprived after implementation of the user fee provision.
The country has no health policy to ensure people's health. Earlier a draft health policy was prepared during the Ershad regime, which was changed in 2000, while another during the last caretaker government in 2008. Now the government has formulated a draft health policy 2009 after reviewing previous two draft policies.
Talking to The Daily Star Prof Shah Monir Hossain said that the government will review the recommendations to be posted the website to formulate a second draft and several meetings with different stakeholders would be held before finalising the policy.
Before December it will not be possible to finalise the health policy, he said.
The draft health policy has 15 objectives, 18 principles and 49 strategies.