Bangladesh Health Watch Report 2009: How Healthy is Health? Sector Governance

This report on the governance of the health sector in Bangladesh is the third such report presented by the Bangladesh Health Watch (BHW) on the state of health in Bangladesh. BHW, a multi organisation civil society network, was formed in 2006 to establish a tradition of holding the state as well as non-state sectors accountable for their performance in delivering quality health care to the citizens. BHW decided to produce an annual report on the state of health in Bangladesh focusing on a theme that deserves priority attention. The report was designed as an instrument of accountability for health care providers by and to the citizens of Bangladesh. As a citizen's initiative, BHW needed to establish its credibility before both the public and the government through the quality of its work and the independence as well as non-partisan nature of its contributions. These qualities have now, hopefully, been established over the course of two successive reports, the first one focusing on the theme of health equity and the second one on the status of the health workforce in Bangladesh. These two reports have been widely used as objective measures of the state of health in Bangladesh by various stakeholders including the government, professional and civil society organisations, service providers and users, media and international development agencies.