After sweeping to power in 2009, the Awami League-led government in its first year spent around Tk 5,104 crore in the health sector, which was six percent of the total budget for the fiscal year of 2009-10.

Since then, the health sector witnessed considerable development in terms of infrastructure and physicians, among others. However, the government's actual expenditure in the key sector has remained stagnant, and in certain fiscal years, exhibited a decline.

For instance, the outlay for the health sector was Tk 25,028 crore in 2021-22, representing 4.8 percent of the budget of Tk 518,188 crore. It was five percent in the previous fiscal year when the government spent Tk 21,647 crore under a Tk 460,160 crore budget.

Such a dismal spending, one of the lowest in the world, frustrates the health experts who say that the citizens, particularly the poor and those belonging to limited-income brackets, bear higher treatment costs because of the government's poor attention to improving and widening healthcare services.