ED: Fixing the health care system should be priority number one

It is unacceptable that this country, championing equitable growth, has such high out-of-pocket (OOP) expenditures for health care
As the new fiscal year gets underway, it is imperative that we look back on what went wrong for Bangladesh last year, and nowhere are the glaring shortcomings more apparent than in our health sector.

This became even more apparent when Finance Division’s Senior Secretary Abdur Rouf Talukder readily admitted to the challenges Bangladesh faced in dealing with Covid-19, and the failure of our health sector, particularly to spend the budget it was allocated and public health procurements being supply-driven and not driven by the needs of the people.