The New Nation - Internet Edition

Staff Reporter

Experts at a workshop in the city said there is lack of allocation in health sector in the national budget.

Budget should be prepared with the need of poor people and there must have community participation while preparing it, they said. The government should ensure proper medicine, equipment and necessary facilities for the poor patients in all clinics and hospitals across the country, they added.

Family planning programme in the country is being hampered often due to lack of manpower, said the experts at the concluding session of the workshop on 'Health and Family Planning Budget Monitoring: Tools and Indicators Formulation' organised by Development Organisation of the Rural Poor (DORP) held at BIAM Conference Room yesterday.

Hosne Ara Begum, Director (Finance) of Directorate of Family Planning, was present as chief guest, while Enamul Huq, Assistant Director of Family Planning, AHM Nouman, Secretary General of DORP, Apurba Chakraborty, Expert of Endangerhealth, among others, spoke at the concluding session.

Speakers urged the government to increase community involvement at upazila level in the country so that the service delivery system will be decentralised.

While planning of the national budget, allocation in the health sector was not properly made. The allocation of budget in the heath sector is disproportionate, they said.

Director of Family Planning said 83 per cent of the poor people have got family planning facilities from the government hospitals till now.

Manpower problem is the main obstacle to improve the family planning activities in the country, she said.

Experts urged the government to identify major health requirements, appropriate allocation of funds and optimal utilisation of available funds, supplies and use of manpower for positive outcome of the existing state of affairs.

At present, our health sector at the upazila level is deplorable and an effective mechanism is needed to find out the cause, they said.

They urged the government to ensure budget-monitoring tools before planning of the national budget as per the proper distribution of allocation.

Some 30 participants including journalists and upazila health and family planning officers attended the three-day workshop.