International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science (IJRISS) | Volume VI, Issue VIII, August 2022 | ISSN 2454–6186
Md. Robiul Islam1*, Abdur Rahman2
1Lecturer, Department of Public Administration, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (FASS), Bangladesh University of Professionals (BUP), Mirpur Cantonment, Dhaka-1216, Bangladesh
2Senior Lecturer, Department of Public Administration, Stamford University Bangladesh, Dhaka, Bangladesh
*Corresponding Author
DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.47772/IJRISS.2022.6709
Abstract: The influx of COVID 19 has exposed the vulnerability of the health sector in both developing and developed countries. So, it has been crucial to assess the e-health service of the Bangladesh government during COVID 19. A cross-sectional mixed method survey was conducted where 150 participants took part in a closed-ended questionnaire survey and 10 participants were involved in a semi-structured interview. Participants are selected from urban (72%) and rural (28%) areas purposively who availed of e-health services during COVID 19. The study used SPSS version 25 to analyze quantitative data using descriptive statistics, frequency, mean, standard deviation, and variance. The result of the study exposed that the existing status of electronic health services in Bangladesh is not satisfactory yet. Most of the people (91.3%) accessed online vaccine registration services only. Due to the lack of information, participants are not availing rest of the e-health services of the government like telemedicine, COVID test report download, live corona test, and use of corona tracer app/ surokkha app. As a result, only 5.76% of participants are highly satisfied with the government e-health service during the pandemic. 56.88% responded that government had high-level challenges to promote electronic health services during COVID 19. The major challenges are lack of available e-health service information, awareness raising, and low level of internet speed. So, the study recommends bridging the digital divide between urban & rural areas along with ensuing more IT facilities in government health services.
Keywords: Electronic Health Service, COVID 19, Bangladesh.
I. INTRODUCTION
COVID 19 has been a major concern for the physical and mental health of people all over the world (Kontoangelos et al., 2020). It is caused by SARS-CoV-2 which has some common symptoms like fever, cold, cough, etc. At the beginning time of COVID 19, it was thought that COVID 19 was spread through zoonotic interaction. But the world experienced that this virus had spread through human-to-human and animal interaction (Huang et al., 2020). On 30th January 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared COVID 19 a public health emergency of international concern (WHO, 2020). Bangladesh declared COVID 19 the pandemic in 2020 by warning people to maintain COVID protocols, social distancing, staying at home, hand washing, and mandatory mask-wearing in public places (Flexman et al., 2020; The Government of Bangladesh, 2020).