The Bangladesh government will introduce "Telehealth Care Services" across the country from next month aiming at providing health care facility to all the people, a senior official said on Wednesday.

Director General of Health Services under Bangladesh's Health Ministry Md Abul Faiz said that all public hospitals at the country's 481 sub-districts will be provided required logistics including mobile phones for establishing a unit of telehealth care center.

"Through telehealth system, we'll be able to provide medical care closer to home for all," he said.

Doctors will be on duty in each unit of telehealth centers to receive phone calls from patients. The telehealth centers will remain open for 24 hours, he said.

Faiz said all hospitals authorities have already been asked to complete necessary formalities by this month so that the operations in telehealth centers can be started at the beginning of the next month.

More than half of Bangladesh's 144 million population, who can't avail health care facility due mainly to poverty, are expected to be immensely benefited from the services as they will not require to pay any fee, Faiz said.

The telehealth system will also help the mass people to be aware of non-communicable diseases (NCDs), Faiz said. The World Health Organization estimated that by 2010 NCDs would be responsible for 59 percent of deaths in the country compare with 40 percent in 1990.

Underlying factors that contribute to the increasing burden of NCDs include unplanned urbanization, changing dietary habits, unregulated tobacco consumption, air pollution, road traffic injury and lack of awareness about health behavior, Faiz said.

(Xinhua News Agency January 8, 2009)