Strengthening community clinics

Community clinic has proved to be an efficient and low cost primary healthcare provider at the grassroots level. The present government deserves full credit for reviving and bolstering them.  

Speakers at a roundtable titled "Community Clinics in Mother and Child Healthcare" organised by World Vision Bangladesh and Daily Prothom Alo on Tuesday, discussed various aspects of the community clinic services and ways to improve them further. Currently, there are 13,006 community clinics all over the country with 13,839 healthcare providers trained on a 12-week primary healthcare programme. A community clinic also dispenses 30 different kinds of medicines. Now the government is trying to improve the structure of the clinic by including a delivery room equipped with a labour table and required medicines. Furthermore, webcams, laptops and phones will be provided to connect the rural healthcare facility with better services available at the Upazilla or district level. With this improved structure community clinics will definitely be able to cater for better mother and child healthcare.    

Now, with the rising incidence of non-communicable diseases like diabetes, blood pressure and cancer in villages, health seeking behaviour of the people is also changing. Community clinics need to be strengthened so that they can provide treatment for these diseases as well as make the community members aware about the afflictions. Given the importance of this extensive network of primary healthcare service, community clinics should receive due weightage with adequate funds and logistic support.