80 health facilities lie idle in 18 districts

It was nearly impossible to figure out that the two-storey building was in fact a 20-bed hospital.

The main entrance to the structure in Gazipur’s Talia village was locked from the outside. Overgrown shrubs surrounded the boundary wall. Some windows were open, but no one was around, a recent visit to the facility revealed.

The building was constructed at a cost of around Tk 20 crore in 2020, but the health authorities have not yet been able to launch medical services.

At least 80 medical facilities, including the Talia hospital, across 18 districts have remained non-operational for years -- some for over a decade -- due to shortages of manpower and equipment as well as administrative red tape, depriving thousands of healthcare close to their homes.

Of the facilities, 17 are hospitals, including four for children, 14 community clinics, and 12 extensions to existing hospitals, while the rest comprise other facilities such as quarters for health workers.

In most cases, the facilities remain unused due to a lack of manpower, equipment and medicines, according to health ministry documents obtained by The Daily Star.

Some buildings were constructed to be used as quarters for doctors and nurses. But those have remained unused, as the hospitals they were meant to serve are operating on a limited scale.

The construction of 41 facilities was completed by 2024, while the rest were built earlier -- some more than a decade ago, the documents show.

The unused Bangladesh Institute of Health Management in Savar. Photo: Star

NON-FUNCTIONAL HOSPITALS

Residents of Talia and four nearby villages in Gazipur’s Kaliganj upazila were supposed to receive healthcare at the Talia hospital from 2021 when the structure was handed over to the health authorities.

Muktar Hossain, whose family donated two acres of land for the hospital, said, “What was the point of donating the land? The hospital has been built, but it has not been made operational. People are not getting any medical services.”

When asked, Gazipur Civil Surgeon Mamunur Rahman said, “The authorities have neither assigned health workers nor made allocations for medicines.”

A 100-bed children’s hospital on 1.65 acres of land in Rangpur city has also remained unused for around six years due to a lack of manpower and medical equipment, show documents.

The three-storey facility was built at a cost of Tk 31.08 crore in November 2019 and handed over to the Civil Surgeon’s Office in March 2020.

When contacted, Rangpur Civil Surgeon Shahin Sultana said several letters had been sent to the health ministry, requesting the recruitment of doctors and nurses as well as medical equipment for the hospital. But none of those yielded results.

Similar situations were found in other districts. Several structures at Sadar hospitals in seven districts -- Panchagarh, Netrakona, Lalmonirhat, Gaibandha, Sylhet, Meherpur and Narsingdi -- were completed by June 2024, seeking to upgrade the 100-bed facilities to 250-bed ones. But all of them remain unused.

In Madaripur, a trauma centre was built at a cost of Tk 12 crore in Shibchar Upazila in November 2022 to treat victims of road crashes following a rise in accidents on the Dhaka-Mawa-Bhanga Expressway.

The 20-bed hospital in Gazipur’s Talia village. Photo: Star

But the three-storey facility has remained idle since then, as the authorities are yet to create posts for health workers to run the facility, said one of the officials.

A recent visit to the centre revealed that electrical sockets and equipment had been taken away from the control room.

When contacted, Madaripur Acting Civil Surgeon Sardar Mohammad Khaliluzzaman declined to comment.

In Savar, the government constructed four buildings, including a 12-storey one, for the Bangladesh Institute of Health Management (BIHM) in 2023, primarily to train doctors. But they remain unused as the authorities have yet to prepare an organogram for the institute.

Contacted, Health Secretary Saidur Rahman said they have been trying to put some of the unused facilities in operation as early as possible.

“Efforts are underway to make functional the unused children’s hospitals, extensions to several Sadar hospitals and trauma centres. The process of deploying manpower has also begun,” he told The Daily Star on January 6.

The government plans to transfer the equipment and manpower of paediatric units from Sadar hospitals to four children’s hospitals as an interim measure.

Referring to the BIHM, he said it would take two to three years to complete the necessary procedures to make it functional.

In reply to a query, he said some facilities are not viable for providing services, as those were constructed without any feasibility study.

“We are also trying to engage NGOs (non-governmental organisations) to make some of them operational,” he added.

[Our correspondents in Gazipur, Shariatpur and Lalmonirhat contributed to this report]