Dhaka awaits health economists

Health economists from around the world will assemble in Dhaka on Saturday for a two-day symposium on healthcare financing issues in Bangladesh.

The symposium is going to be held in the backdrop of the government’s recently approved healthcare financing strategy for the next 20 years.

Organisers say the strategy that aims to ensure universal health coverage in Bangladesh would be presented before the experts in the symposium for their views on its implementation.

Health officials in Bangladesh are contemplating the idea of universal health coverage, as studies show people have to spend 65 percent out-of-pocket for medicare, which in turn pushes 5 percent of them into poverty every year.

Besides, experts say due to heavy out-of-pocket expenditure, preventive aspects of health remain ignored among Bangladeshi people, who eventually have to pay more for late arrival in the hospitals.

Prepaid health financing mechanisms, such as health insurance, are the key route to the universal health coverage, they opine.

The Dhaka University’s Institute of Health Economics (IHE), with the support of Deutsche Gesellschaft fuer Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH and the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, is organising the meet.

GIZ says European health economists and regional experts would also join the local academics, practitioners and policy makers in the conference at the Dhaka University.