Five Floating Medical Units Inaugurated
by Friendship News Desk
April 10, 2025
On 9 April 2025, the ‘Medical Mobile Units for Healthcare in Rural Areas in Bangladesh’ project was officially inaugurated in Haimchar, Chandpur. The project aims to deliver quality healthcare services to the country’s most hard-to-reach areas.
Advancing healthcare in the remote riverine and coastal regions of Bangladesh is a continuous struggle, largely due to geographical isolation, economic woes, forced migration due to climate change, and lack of formal, affordable healthcare services. Communities in these regions end up relying on informal practitioners. The ‘Medical Mobile Units for Healthcare’ initiative aims to directly address these needs by providing medical services and specialised healthcare camps, serving as a stepping stone towards a better quality of life and accessibility for the communities.
The project deploying five Medical Mobile Units with an extensive outreach network comprising of satellite clinics and community health workers is generously funded by the King Abdullah Humanitarian Foundation (KAHF) through the King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Program for Charity Works (KAAP) of the Islamic Development Bank (IsDB). The project is implemented by Friendship with close collaboration with the Directorate General of Healthcare Services (DGHS) under Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of Bangladesh. The Economic Relations Division (ERD) of the Ministry of Finance (MoF) provides strategic support to the project.
Several high-level donors, government representatives and esteemed stakeholders attended the event. Md. Saidur Rahman, Honourable Secretary, Health Services Division, MoHFW, joined the inaugural event as the chief guest. Prof. Dr. Md. Abu Jafor, Director General of the DGHS, attended the event as the special guest. Suliman Abdulaziz Azzabin, CEO of KAHF and Adil M. Alsharif, Director of Special and Trust Funds Department at the Islamic Development Bank, were the guests of honour at the event. Friendship founder Runa Khan also graced the occasion with her presence.
The hospitals are equipped with a diverse range of medical and diagnostic facilities, including eyecare, dental care, emergency and minor surgeries, maternal and childcare, communicable and non-communicable disease management, referral linkage with Government health facilities, etc. Periodic camps are organised by one of the hospitals, focusing on specialised treatments such as ENT, burns and plastic surgery, and gynaecology. The hospitals are supported by an outreach network of 220 satellite clinics and 220 community health workers (CHWs), ensuring door-to-door access to healthcare services for marginalised communities.
The current phase of the project will cover five years of operation and is expected to reach 3.27 million beneficiaries across 13 upazilas in 12 districts in the riverine and coastal regions of Bangladesh. The project hopes to be a significant achievement in the path towards health equity and accessibility in Bangladesh, reaching underserved individuals every month to ensure no one is left behind in healthcare.
