19. Akhter F. (2004), ‘Decentralization and Integration of Health and Family Planning Services in Bangladesh’, Development, 47(2): 140-144.

The health and family planning programme in Bangladesh has undergone many administrative changes. The decentralization policy along with integration of health and family planning services has been dictated, according to Farida Akhter, by donors to the Bangladesh government. She underlines how, as a result, the already neglected health sector has been used for the service delivery of clinical contraceptive service rather than primary health care or meeting other health rights of the community. The author concludes that there is the need to keep the health and family planning separate because the interest of the donors is different and uncoordinated. At the government level, the health care is run with the revenue budget. Healthcare is still seen as a commitment to the people by the government. That the government must raise funds from the revenue budget to finance the health programme is an important issue, although due to lack of resources, health sector receives much less allocation than it requires. In contrast population control is entirely a donor-initiated and donor-funded project, therefore, the government carries out population control programmes as a commitment to fulfill the conditionalities of the donors. The integration policy of these services reflects the respective interest groups of health and population control.