Community Participation on Health and Family Planning Programs in Bangladesh: The Role of Education and Knowledge on HFP for Plummeting Pharmaceutical Costing

Old fashioned Community Participation (CP) in Healthcare and Family Planning Programs (HFPPs) requires a number of revisions in order to confront the challenges of 21st century. Fundamentally operating any large project likewise HFPPs requires a mammoth budget. It is thus important to have some financial gains and savings for a state from the relevant areas by introducing a newer project. Evidences assert that HFPPs consumes a higher endowment without reducing the pharmaceutical cost in the respective area. Thus, in such situations, state faces financial constraints by introducing supplementary or a parallel projects. Considering this issue as research problem, this study was conducted in Bangladesh to understand the impact of community participation on HFPPs. An analytical justification is used to discover the factors that are causing the problems for existing HFPPs. Observation also notes that HFPPs fails in plummeting pharmaceutical service costing in the respective area. It rather works as marketing tool for pharmaceutical business. Additional findings indicate that socio-economic condition, basic knowledge and fundamental awareness are essential in receiving the extended benefit. In addition to these, integration of CP and HFPPs may overcome the problems of the gap between demand and available resources for meeting the extensive healthcare that a country needs. However, it is also somehow constrained because of inadequate education and knowledge in the respective area of the rural population who are the key dependents on HFPPs. Therefore, we emphasize both on the redesigning of existing HFPPs and education attainment for the long term benefits. Our study is witness to support extensive CP in existing HFPPs and advocate why current system needs to be redesigned including the plummeting pharmaceutical service costing in the way forward for Bangladesh.