Bangladesh Health Watch (BHW)

Bangladesh Health Watch (BHW), a multi-stakeholder civil society advocacy and monitoring network dedicated to improve the health system in Bangladesh through critical review of policies and programmes and recommendation of appropriate actions for change. It was initiated in 2006 aiming to improve health of the people by way of monitoring progress in the health of the population and health systems, and playing a catalytic role in making lasting changes in the health sector. The main activity of Bangladesh Health Watch is to publish an annual report on the state of health in Bangladesh every year by commissioning researches. A Working Group consisting of researchers and activists from different organizations carry out the different activities for the Watch. The Bangladesh Health Watch Reports identified the most critical challenges to the health sector at particular points of time and published insightful situation analyses leading to practical recommendations, based on evidence from existing and primary research. The overall achievement of Bangladesh Health Watch over the period of 2006-2020 is significant in terms of Publishing Research based reports and News Letters. There are six research reports published in every alternative years and six newsletters have published from December 2013 in every six months interval up to December 2016. The contemporary and emerging issues were highlighted in all publications to persuade government on the emerging issues.

Bangladesh Health Watch has started its three years journey from December 2019 to December 2022 title “Making Bangladesh’s Healthcare Systems More Responsive and Participatory” to execute a comprehensive plan for meeting its agenda of working as a citizens’ watchdog bringing lasting positive changes to the health scenario in Bangladesh by critically analyzing policies and programs and influencing policy changes. The overall objectives of the project is to utilize the opportunity to transform an active, evidence based, impactful watch-dog for the health sector, bringing citizen’s participation and voice to the health policy arena, and enhancing transparency and accountability. The theory of change is set for the project is to “A more responsive healthcare system that delivers better quality, more transparent and equitable healthcare for all being informed by people’s participation and voice”.

Bangladesh’s health sector has impecunious presence of citizens’ participation and voice in the policy arena, the need for a strong platform to raise issues and concerns, suggest solutions and support and lobby the government in achieving its programmatic goals and international and national commitments including the PHC, UHC, and SDGs, promote transparency and accountability and take stronger measures to drive equity is being strongly felt by various sectors of the society including academics, program experts, development partners.