PHA-Exch> Seeking help in countering WB plan for privatized health services in Bangladesh (2)

["Claudio Schuftan" <cschuftan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

From: Health Right <healthrightbd@xxxxxxxxx>

Abu Naser Khan

 

Protecting the Bangladesh Health System from World Bank-forced Privatization:

A Call for Help

Bangladesh is a low-income country, with about half of its children chronically malnourished.  Private health care is an unimaginable luxury for most of the population, which is dependent on the government for basic services.  Yet those essential government services are under threat, due to the prolonged strategy of the World Bank to push the government to privatize various sectors of the economy.  The excuse for the action is high levels of corruption, and management problems in the government health services.  Yet corruption mostly occurs at the level of equipment procurement and construction, which decisions are made by high-level officials (including funders themselves) not involved in day-to-day hospital management.  Meanwhile, solutions to chronic mismanagement should not include giving up responsibility for or power over operations of government health services.

The World Bank is taking advantage of the State of Emergency called by the current, non-elected government in January 2007, which continues to date and makes protest illegal.

This unpopular and deadly move must be stopped, or the conditions of the poor in Bangladesh—at least half of the population—will rapidly deteriorate even farther.  Right to health must be recognized as a basic right, not as a privilege for those who can afford it.  The government in

Bangladesh, as elsewhere, must accept its obligation to provide basic services to its population as part of the non-negotiable mandate of any government, and the World Bank must understand that its attempts to dismantle public health care around the world will not occur without protest.

Campaigns to change government policy in Bangladesh in other areas have been effective.  The media has given much coverage to the disastrous nature of this planned move.  Many organizations and individuals are working together to fight it.

But we need your help, to show that the international community stands with the poor and disempowered of Bangladesh.  By uniting to oppose the World Bank campaign, we can all take a stand for health, against the imposition of market values in an area where they don't belong—the basic human right to health.

 

Please join us and support Bangladesh by signing the petition.

We, the undersigned, call upon the World Bank to stop pressuring the Government of Bangladesh to privatize government health services.  Health is a basic right that should be available to all, regardless of income or purchasing power.  By privatizing government health services, basic health care will pass out of the reach of the majority of the population.  Bangladesh cannot afford such a dangerous policy.  The World Bank should accept that it is the mandate of governments to provide basic services to their populations, and that such basic services as health, education, and provision of water, electricity, sewerage, and so on do not belong in the hands of private, profit-making corporations.  The disastrous consequences of such World Bank programs in other countries are well known, and the World Bank should desist from pushing strategies that it knows are extremely harmful, and that countries such as the United States, the main force behind the World Bank, would never accept on its own soil.

 

 

Honorable Chief Adviser's

Caretaker Government

People's Republic of Bangladesh
Old Sangsad Bhaban, Dhaka.
Telephone- 880-2-9144848,8159896
e-mail: info@xxxxxxxxxx

 

Honorable Heal Adviser

Caretaker Government

People's Republic of Bangladesh

Bangladesh Secretariat, Dhaka-1000

Telephone: 88027168008

Fax: 8809571301, 88027169077

Email: info@ mohfw.gov.bd

 

To

Director

Directorate General of Health Services.

Moakhali, Dhaka

88-02-8816412, 8816459

Fax: 88029886415

info@xxxxxxxxxxx

 

 

Directorate General of Family Planning
Janasankhya Bhaban
Azimpur, Dhaka-1205

Phone : 88-02-8612323
Fax : 88-02- 8618341
e-mail :dgfp@xxxxxxxxxxxx
website : http://www.dgfp.gov.bd

World Health Organization, Bangladesh

House # 12, Road # 7,
 Dhanmondi Residential Area,
 Dhaka 1205
 Tel: (880 2) 861 4653-55, 861 6097-8
 Fax: (880 2) 861 3247
 Email: registryban@xxxxxxxxxxxxx

 

United Nation Development Program
UN Offices, 18th Floor, IDB Bhaban
Agargaon, Sher-e-Bangla Nagar,
Dhaka 1207, Bangladesh

Telephone: 880 2 811 86 00

Fax: 880 2 811 31 96

Email: registry.bd@xxxxxxxx.bd, info@xxxxxxxxxxx

 

Health systems and services

Director General of Health

World Health Orgnization

Email: info@xxxxxxx

Joel Schaefer
 schaeferj@xxxxxxx

John Rainford
rainfordj@xxxxxxx

Nada Osseiran
osseirann@xxxxxxx