Urban primary health care services through public - private partnership: performance evaluation approach in DCC area

Abstract

Primary Health Care (PHC) as the strategy to achieve constitutional goals of Bangladesh Government “Health for All”. Bangladesh has made important gains in providing primary health care since the Alma Ata Declaration in 1978. All health indicators show steady gains and the health status of the population has improved. Infant, maternal and under-five mortality rates have all decreased over the last decades, with a marked increase in life expectancy at birth. Dhaka City Corporation (DCC) is a public organization working under Ministry of Local Government, Rural Development & Co-operatives (MoLGRD&C), has provided curative and preventive health services to the citizens by the constitutional mandate of “the Local Government (City Corporation) Act, 2009”. On the other hand, the Urban Primary Health Care Project (UPHCP) has been directly executed by the Ministry of LGRD&C through public-private partnership with NGOs as well as DCC act as coordinating organization of the project. [[[The purpose of UPHCP was to improve the health status of the urban poor because the scope of quality health services in Dhaka city is very limited particularly for the poor and grass root community. Dhaka City Corporation is the biggest City Corporation in Bangladesh and Dhaka has the highest number of health partnership with NGOs. That’s why; Dhaka has been selected as study purpose. The research methodology has been designed based on the theoretical framework in connection to the study aim and objectives. From both the cases, a good number of health centre (HC) have been selected for data/information collection. The research was designed towards understanding the nature of primary health care services provided by DCC and UPHCP through public-private partnership. The study was also tried to examining a performance evaluation both DCC and UPHC HC. To understanding the level of satisfaction, the research explores application level of satisfaction index, widely used to examine satisfaction level from individual perspectives as well as used t-test to examine the significant different on accessible facilities, income level, waiting time, nature of health service receives by DCC and UPHC HC from respondents point of views.