Community clinics require local fund

Community support and funds raised at the local level are needed to sustain community clinics and make them more effective in ensuring primary healthcare services in villages, said speakers at a roundtable yesterday.   

The roundtable on the role of "Community Clinics in Mother and Child Healthcare" was organised by World Vision Bangladesh and the daily Prothom Alo at the newspaper's office in the capital.

They said these clinics could contribute to reducing maternal and child mortality, death from communicable diseases and raising awareness about non-communicable ones. 

Dr Makhduma Nargis, additional secretary at the health ministry and project director of the community clinic project, said people's health seeking behaviour can be changed through community groups.

Noting the rising trend of non-communicable diseases like diabetics, blood pressure and cancer in villages, Nargis said community clinics should start making people aware about healthy lifestyles to prevent these diseases.    

"We are trying to improve structures of the clinics by including a delivery room equipped with a labour table, required medicine and saline at each clinic," said Prof Dr Deen Mohammad Noorul Huq, director general of the Directorate General of Health Services.

He said webcams, laptops and phones provided at community clinics could nect the care provider there with doctors at upazila and district healthcare facilities in case of emergency.

Constructed by the government, these clinics, one for every 6,000 people, are equipped with 30 different kinds of medicine and a community healthcare provider with 12-week training in primary healthcare.

At present, 13,006 community clinics are functional with 13839 healthcare providers, according to data of the health ministry.

Other speakers at the programme spoke about reducing the burden on the healthcare providers, providing medicine on need basis and monitoring works of the healthcare providers as well as visits by health and family planning assistants to the villages.