Health minister bemoans tradition of doctors and field staff dodging rural duties

Health Minister Mohammed Nasim claims that he finds it extremely difficult to motivate doctors and field staff long used to dodging rural duties.

“As a health minister of Bangladesh, I am not satisfied,” Nasim said, speaking at the release of Bangladesh Demographic and Health Survey (BDHS) 2014 on Saturday.

“I am not 100 percent satisfied with the works of our field staff,” he said, “they don’t go to office regularly. They don’t give services.”

“It helps none if we deny this”.

The health ministry’s population research and training institute, NIPORT, has conducted the survey with financial and technical support from the USAID.

The US-based ICF International also supported this biggest ever survey of the health sector.

The 2014 edition, seventh DHS conducted in Bangladesh since 1993-94, collected data from more than 17,500 ever-married women aged between 15 years and 49 years in over 17,000 households nationwide.

It found progresses in the maternal and child health and nutritional sector, but the performance in the family planning sector was found low.

A key member of this survey technical committee Dr Kanta Jamil, a senior adviser of the USAID’s Office of Population, Health, Nutrition and Education, said the purpose of the survey was “not to measure success or failure”.

“It’s to guide us where we need greater programme attention to attain programme objectives,” she said.

The health minister thanked those who worked behind the BDHS and said “they have done wonderful job”.

“We have to set priorities analysing those data,” he said.

He asked the director general of the family planning services to work “actively” to improve his sector’s performance.

Family planning workers must work in the field, he instructed.

Referring to the posting of more than 6,000 doctors last year, he said they had been posted at their own home districts, changing government rules.

“Even then we could not ensure their regular presence,” he lamented.

“It’s difficult. It has been a long practice (of dodging duties), so it’s difficult to change”.

“We have to take it as a challenge and work accordingly,” he said.

He said they were committing “crimes by not giving services to people”.

US ambassador in Dhaka Marcia Bernicat extolled the BDHS, and said Bangladesh remained a “shining example” of using data for devising programmes in the health sector.

ICDDR,B’s Professor Emeritus Dr Peter Kim Streatfield, one of the directors Dr Shams El Arifeen, Chief of Party of USAID's MCHIP project Dr Ishtiaque Mannan, and former NIPORT director Ahmed Al-Sabir, among others, discussed on the findings.