Politics keep community clinics dysfunctional

The Awami League government in 1999 launched the community clinic project under the health and population programme of the ministry of health at the union-level. The project aimed at taking primary healthcare services to the doorsteps of the common masses. And the clinics were supposed to have a full-fledged shape by 2003 but the BNP-led alliance appeared less interested to let the programme continue smoothly.

About 250 community clinics were built, each at a cost of Tk 2.5 lakh, in Rangunia, Raozan, Fatikchhari, Paitya, Anwara, Hathazari, Chandanaish, Lohagara, Sitakunda, Mirersarai, Sandwip, Boalkhali, Satkania and Banshkhali upazilas.

The clinics were set up keeping in mind the population density of particular unions of the upazilas and each clinic was to cover around 6,000 people, sources said.

But most of these clinics have yet to be completed due to lack of sufficient infrastructures and poor supply of medicines. As a result, about 90 per cent of the clinics are now lying dysfunctional, they said.

Some physicians who had experience to work with community clinics, however, said that political attitudes and interference of certain quarters with vested interests were the main reasons for this situation.

"The objective of such clinics was indeed very noble and poor people in rural areas would have benefitted immensely from these clinics at their doorsteps," said a physician at Chittagong Medical College Hospital (CMCH) on condition of anonymity.

He said the present government is not interested in running this unique programme because Awami League had initiated it.

"This is not fair because poor people will have to suffer eventually," the physician, who worked at such a clinic at Sitakunda, said.

Another senior doctor, now working at the community medicine department at CMCH, said the main objectives to launch the clinics were to give better healthcare services and reduce the waste of money by integrating the family planning and health programme.

The district civil surgeon officials said that most of the clinics were in operation albeit at 'low scale.'

But this correspondent found something different in some areas.

Construction work of a community clinic at West Guzra union in Raozan was found incomplete and the clinic was not in operation.

The clinic at Padua union in Rangunia was built on the middle of a paddy field devoid of direct road-link or walkway. As a result, it is also virtually dysfunctional.

When contacted, the officials expressed their ignorance about the latest conditions of these two clinics and said they would take steps soon to bring the clinics back into function.