WHO praise Bangladesh’s e-health service

The World Health Organisation’s Assistant Director General Marie-Paule Kieny has extolled Bangladesh’s e-health services at a ministerial meeting in Geneva.

A Ministry of Health and Family Welfare media release on Monday said Kieny emphasised that Bangladesh’s experiences could hold ‘lessons’ for the whole world.

“We are observing Bangladesh’s e-health successes keenly,” she said.

Kieny leads the Health Systems and Innovation (HIS) cluster of the UN-body.

She was chairing a panel discussion on Monday on “e-health standardisation and inter-operability” ministerial meeting.

Bangladesh’s health minister Mohammad Nasim joined the meeting and presented details on the country’s efforts in developing e-health services.

The Awami League led government has been prioritising on e-health systems since 2009 when it came to the power with a slogan of ‘digital Bangladesh’.

It has started scores of services in the health sector using ICT, from data collection and processing to delivering health services.

The health minister said the e-health services had been expanded to the village level , equipping community clinics with computer and internet.

He also mentioned that they had developed a single data entry form to collect all health related information from the field in a concerted way.

The government earlier obtained its UN South-South Award for ‘digital health for digital technology’.

The WHO’s publication e-health atlas in 2010 also appreciated the e-health services in Bangladesh.