Plan to establish 4,500 community clinic units
To enhance healthcare facilities in rural areas, the government plans to establish 4,500 community clinic units at different union parishad levels in the country.
The units will be set up using the infrastructures and facilities of family planning programmes countrywide, said Dr Makhduma Nargis, additional secretary of health and family welfare ministry.
Besides, 2,876 new community clinics will be set up countrywide, raising their total number to 13,500, she said.
She was addressing the press on the launching of Community Clinic Project, an operational research project between Revitalisation of Community Health Care Initiatives in Bangladesh (RCHCIB) and Society for Empowerment, Education and Development (SEED), in the city's Bangladesh Medical Research Council building.
Around 2 lakh people take medical services from community clinics across the country every day, said Dr Barendra Nath Mandal, RCHCIB additional project director.
The government allocated Tk 103 crore for medicine supply to the community clinics in the fiscal year 2011-2012, he informed.
Dr AN Zafar Ullah, CEO of SEED, said the current project aims to strengthen the capacity of community clinics by bringing together existing technologies and social and economical infrastructures.
The project will operate for the next 6 years with specific objectives including identifying the strengths and weaknesses of services delivery mechanism in rural areas and identifying the healthcare needs of poor people, he said.
Representatives of International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh and other non-government organisations attended the function.
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