Jhenaidah Community-Based Health Care (CBHC) of the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS) has stopped the supply of all sorts of antibiotics to the Community Clinics (CCs) aiming to prevent antibiotic resistance among patients.

Sources related to the DGHS said the decision was taken considering the health and hygiene of patients as no graduate doctors provide healthcare services in the Community Clinics since its inception.
Community health care providers are not authorized to prescribe any antibiotics as they are not graduated at all, DGHS said.

Meanwhile, local patients alleged this decision has made their situation much worse, as now they have to rush to the Upazila Health Complexes for treatment which requires antibiotics. Earlier, they used to get them easily through the Community Clinics which have been providing medical services to the rural and marginal people for over 15 years.

A number of patients at the Aruakandi Community Clinic in Shailkupa upazila, on Tuesday alleged that the CC authorities have stopped supplying a number of drugs adding suffering to the patients.
Now they have to rush to the Upazila Health Complex located at the upazila headquarters which requires both money and time. Sometimes, poor patients can’t afford to reach the UHC when it requires, they said.
They suggested that the government should appoint graduate physicians gradually in the rural Community Clinics to provide better healthcare. The decision to stop the supply of antibiotics in the community clinics was not a wise one, they said.
Jhenaidah Civil Surgeon Dr Suvra Rani Debnath said Earlier CBHC section of the DGHS was supplying around 30 types of medicines in the UHCs and a good number of drugs to the community clinics.
“But antibiotics can have a bad impact on over human body for haphazard use, inadequate or overdoses, so, the CBHC had stopped the supply. Now the supply of a few numbers of antibiotics like phenoximethyl penicillin, amoxicillin, oxy-tetracycline and benzoyl metronidazole have been restricted until and unless the graduate physicians are posted at the community clinics”, he said.