Community clinics in crisis

Almost all of the 51 community clinics in Gaibandha Sadar upazila, with no physicians, supportive staff and medicine, have become a microcosm of the broken healthcare system of the country. According to a report published in this newspaper, some of them lack even basic amenities like electricity and water. 

That's no way to run a healthcare facility. Why has the authority stopped supplying essential drugs to patients who are now told to buy medicine from the market?  Why have the employees not been regularised under the revenue budget? How can the government expect them to show up at work if they are not paid enough to make a living? 

The idea of the community clinics across the country, established by the government in 2009, was to bring health care to the doorstep of people. To a great extent, they did the job by contributing significantly to the improvement of the overall antenatal and postnatal care family planning and nutritional services, providing treatment for diarrhoea, pneumonia and other childhood infections and counseling on the consequences of early marriage. 

It is difficult to understand the logic behind setting up such people-friendly health complexes around the country and then not monitoring and following up their performances.  A number of things need to be done to revive the community clinics that are often the only place where people in remote areas can get some kind of healthcare. Doctors must be trained to work in rural areas. And the government should offer incentives to those who do.