Health care delivery system in Dhaka city : a spatial analysis of private clinics and hospital

Abstract

Before independence when Dhaka was a provincial capital, health care delivery system was limited only to the government hospitals and centres. After independence when Dhaka became capital city, the city experienced a sharp rise in population migrating from other parts of the country and the need for health care facility grew rapidly, Existing government llOspitaland health care centres with around 5500 beds just failed to cope up with the rising demand. Under such situation private health care system started developing. A total of five zones out of ten zones under Ohaka City Corporation were studied. The study was conducted considering Iocational and distributional pattern of the private clinics and hospitals, typology, size and facilities available and their spatial variations as well as cost and quality of the private health care services and accessibility of the various income groups to such services, Study of the five zone shows that the distribution of the private health care centre has been largely influenced by the economic consideration of the prospective users ofthe establishments and as such most of these institutions are concentrated disproj}{Jriionatelyin some particular areas instead of being distributed and balanced way. From the consideration of place and facility, out of the 230 private clinics and hospitals in the city there are only few recently established specialized units and are run by part time consultants. Private health care facility lacks seriously to serve the need of the large number of least privileged section living in the slums. In other words such facility especially cater to the well to do sections of the society only. Zone no. 6 has been considered to be the most ideal from the viewpoint of location, environment, and patient availability among all other zones. From cost point of view,ciinics which have better diagnostics facility and scope, better than average services are found to have higher establishment cost and monthly expenditure.