The five medicines that upazila health complexes hand out free through their non-communicable disease (NCD) corners to control high blood pressure and diabetes are running out. National Heart Foundation data show that all 446 upazila health complexes are short of at least one of them, and remaining stocks will be gone in October. Samakal confirmed the shortage at 10 upazila health complexes.

Fatima Begum, a 32-year-old homemaker in Jamalpur Sadar, used to collect a month's supply every month; last month she went home empty-handed. Karim Ali, 70, of Kotchandpur in Jhenaidah now gets ten days' worth and buys the rest from a pharmacy.

Launched in 2018, NCD corners now run in 446 upazila health complexes and 30 district hospitals. They have 1,480,117 registered patients, 1,131,487 with high blood pressure and 896,293 with diabetes, and regular medication keeps the condition under control for 61 percent of them.

Professor Dr Halimur Rashid, director of disease control at the Directorate General of Health Services, said that with the NCD programme's funding stopped, hospitals were told to buy these drugs from their own budgets, which are limited at upazila level. A letter on 16 March warned that stocks would run out within 60 days and asked for Tk 100 crore; six and a half months later nothing has come, and he said nothing is likely to. By his estimate about 70 percent of patients already buy their own medicine, and the shortage could push that up by at most 5 percentage points.

Doctors say poor patients may take their medicine irregularly or stop altogether, raising the risk of heart disease and complications. Professor Dr Sohel Reza Choudhury of the National Heart Foundation said the health budget share has risen from 5.3 to 7.4 percent, and spending a good part of the increase on blood pressure drugs would help cut heart disease.

By the Global Burden of Disease estimate for 2022, heart disease is the biggest cause of natural death in Bangladesh, 36 in every 100 deaths. The World Heart Federation's country profile, citing IHME data, puts heart disease deaths in 2024 at 415,286. Samakal published the report on World Heart Day, 29 September.

The report is by Samakal.

Source: Samakal