Prof. Hasnat Alamgir, Chair of Public Health at IUBAT publishes frequently on health care topics in the Financial Express of Bangladesh. In his latest editorial, he writes, “In most hospitals in Bangladesh, the Emergency Departments … appear to be very busy, crowded, and often quite chaotic. The healthcare professionals look overwhelmed and exhausted while attending to the very large number of care seekers. This begs these questions to be answered: 1) do all the patients in Bangladesh who go to ED always really need emergency care? 2) Given other options for receiving care, would they still go to ED? 3) Is the emergency care capacity for the population so low that more EDs should be built?” His conclusion is that a stronger primary care delivery system and a focus on social determinants of health would reduce the need and use of acute healthcare services. These will be major themes of the MPH program to be offered at IUBAT.
