Path to Transform Bangladesh's Health System for Better Results

Over the past decade, under the astute leadership of the Government of Bangladesh (GoB), the country has made impressive strides in enhancing the health and well-being of its people. The remarkable gains include a notable surge in life expectancy and a significant reduction in maternal mortality rates, a testament to Bangladesh's commitment to fostering a healthier future for all. The GoB’s maternal and child health programs showcase a comprehensive approach to public health, with immunization drives and family planning initiatives serving as models for other health challenges. Disease control efforts, such as those targeting tuberculosis and malaria, and the eradication of polio, leprosy, and Kala-azar highlight the effectiveness of targeted interventions and strategic planning. Central to this progress is the commitment of the Bangladeshi people, particularly women, to healthy and prosperous families, supported by the GoB's clear vision, incremental budget increases, and strategic policy initiatives, recognizing health as fundamental to national development. As Bangladesh works to achieve its ambition of becoming an upper-middle-class country, improving the health of its people will be key to success. To do so, it must anticipate and address numerous challenges, including those that originate from outside its borders, such as climate change and pandemics. The World Bank's review of the Bangladesh health sector for this report identifies five systems-level changes the country needs to make to strengthen health service delivery. First, the country should finance a resilient health system through measures such as increasing public funding and exploring earmarked taxes. Second, the country needs to improve governance and political commitment including by prioritizing political support for health financing and strengthening regulatory capacity. Third, the country should advance digital health including by strengthening investment in digital technology and improving regulatory oversight of digital health initiatives. Fourth, the country needs to address market failures that result in poor quality of many private-sector providers including by adopting measures to remove the lowest-quality practitioners and benchmarking the performance of licensing and accreditation bodies. Finally, the country should purchase support services at scale including by developing more coherent policy, legal, and administrative frameworks for this purchasing and grounding strategic health purchasing in performance data.