Less than five mortality of 65 per thousand live births & maternal mortality of 5.7 per thousand are two unacceptably high health service indicator.
Per capita annual health expenditure in Bangladesh is US $ 12 which is one of the lowest in the region, whereas, the WHO threshold level is $ 42. If the society is stratified into poor and non-poor, the average spending will not exceed US $4.

Nevertheless, the country has been identified as one of 57 countries with critical shortage of health workforce. The doctors, nurses and midwives number below 2.28 per 1000 population whereas the nurses to population ratio of 0.14 per 1000 and nurses to doctors ratio of 1:1.85.

Bangladesh is estimated to have more than 1 million patients with cancer at any point of time.

Possibly an equal number of patients with other mostly incurable diseases like AIDS, progressively neurological, cardiac and respiratory and other diseases will also be there. Bangladesh has a death rate of 5.6 and a population of 150 million gives about a million a death a year. The total number of patients needing palliative care can be estimated to be 60 percent of all deaths or 0.6 million people a year.

It is estimated that by 2010, non-communicable diseases will be responsible for 59% of deaths, compared to 40%in 1990.

There should be a concern for the wide disparities and inequities that are so pervasive in the society. The persistent shortage of skilled professionals in the rural areas and for the urban poor remains one of our most fundamental challenges. The overwhelming

majority of health care providers are informal providers with uncertain quality catering to the needs of approximately 80% of the population particularly in the rural area.

The National Health Service (NHS) coordinated by the Ministry of Health is the main service provider to the majority of the people. It delivers care to the 4498 geographically defined health service centers called Union sub centre besides the larger 64 District hospitals and tertiary medical college hospitals.