He made the announcement while speaking as the chief guest at an orientation meeting on the overall activities of the ministry held at its conference room in the capital.

Reaffirming the government’s commitment to ensuring quality healthcare services across the country, the minister said, “We want to guarantee the highest standard of services in hospitals.”

“We will carry out our responsibilities in line with the directives and guidance of the Prime Minister,” he added.

Stressing accountability in patient care, he warned that negligence in providing medical services would not be tolerated.

“We will make immediate visits to hospitals to see whether the doctors on duty are discharging their responsibilities properly. Everyone must be accountable,” he said.

He added that all activities of the ministry must directly benefit the people and that no syndicate would be allowed to gain undue advantage in the health sector.

Highlighting the importance of inclusive healthcare, the minister said the Prime Minister has directed that services be ensured equally for all citizens, regardless of political affiliation.

Addressing the meeting, State Minister for Health and Family Welfare Dr M A Muhit outlined existing challenges in the sector, noting that many posts remain vacant in various departments and institutions.

“Due to these vacancies, people are being deprived of necessary services. Steps must be taken to fill the vacant posts promptly. We also need to place greater emphasis on improving the quality of medical education,” he said.

The meeting was chaired by Health Secretary Md. Saidur Rahman and was attended, among others, by Director General of the Directorate General of Health Services Prof. Dr. Md. Abu Jafor.

He made the remarks during a view-exchange meeting with the heads of various departments and organizations under the Ministry of Home Affairs at the conference room of the Bangladesh Secretariat today.

The Home Minister said that after nearly a decade and a half, a political government has been formed through a transparent election, raising high hopes among citizens.

“People have high expectations from us. We want to quickly implement our election manifesto to fulfill those expectations. Democratic reforms in various law enforcement agencies, including the police, must be prioritized in line with public expectations,” he said.

Salahuddin Ahmed, also a Standing Committee Member of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), further stated that rebuilding public confidence requires restructuring institutions under the Home Ministry and improving ethical standards within the forces.

“To achieve this goal, we need to recruit the necessary manpower. Budget approval from the Ministry of Finance is also an important issue. With new recruitment and coordinated efforts from everyone, we aim to accomplish our objectives,” he added.

The minister stressed the need for a comprehensive and timely development plan for police and other law enforcement agencies.

He instructed department heads to prepare suggestions and recommendations to help formulate and implement the reform plan, which will determine priority areas for action.

Secretary (Routine Responsibilities) of the Ministry of Home Affairs Md. Delwar Hossain, Inspector General of Police Baharul Alam along with heads of various departments, organizations, and relevant divisions of the ministry, were present at the meeting.

And rather than an expensive drug, it was a cheap and simple brain-training
exercise that was found to decrease dementia rates by a quarter, according to
the study.

“For the first time, this is a gold-standard study that’s given us an idea of
what we can do to reduce risk for developing dementia,” study co-author
Marilyn Albert of Johns Hopkins University in the United States told AFP.

Although there are a vast amount of brain-training games and apps which claim
to fight off cognitive decline, there has been little high-quality, long-term
research proving their effectiveness.

The US team of researchers warned that their study — which only found one
specific type of training made a difference — does not mean that all brain-
training games are effective.

Their trial, called ACTIVE, began in the late 1990s.

More than 2,800 participants aged 65 or older were randomly assigned one of
three different types of brain training — speed, memory, or reasoning — or
were part of a control group.

First, the participants did an hour-long training session twice a week for
five weeks. One and three years later, they did four booster sessions. In
total, there were fewer than 24 hours of training.

During follow ups after five, 10 and most recently 20 years, the speed
training was always “disproportionately beneficial”, Albert said.

After two decades, Medicare records showed that the people who did the speed-
training and booster sessions had a 25-percent reduced risk of getting
dementia.

The researchers were surprised to find that the other two types of training
did not make a statistically significant difference.

The speed training exercise involves clicking on cars and road signs that pop
up in different areas of a computer screen.

– ‘Extraordinarily important’ –

So why did speed training have such an impact? Albert said the researchers
could only guess.

“We assume that this training affected something about connectivity in the
brain,” Albert said.

One important difference was that it adapted to the abilities of the person,
so became easier or more difficult as needed.

When asked about the study’s limitations, Albert said “there aren’t very
many”. One quarter of the participants were from minorities, suggesting that
the results should apply to everyone.

Discovering the exact mechanism for why speed training worked could help
researchers develop a new, more effective exercise in the future, Albert
said.

But the finding is already “extraordinarily important”, she emphasised,
pointing out that reducing dementia among 25 percent of the US population
could save $100 billion in patient care.

There have been numerous previous studies suggesting that people who have a
healthier lifestyle have a lower risk of dementia. However, this research has
been observational, which means it cannot directly demonstrate cause and
effect — unlike randomised controlled trials.

Dementia affects 57 million people and is the seventh leading cause of death
globally, according to the World Health Organization.

The speed training task is called “Double Decision” and is available via the
brain-training app BrainHQ.

The study was published in the journal Alzheimer’s and Dementia:
Translational Research & Clinical Research.

“NGOs are already involved in areas such as maternal and child health, non-communicable diseases, elderly health care, and control of tobacco and tobacco product use. I hope NGOs would continue to work alongside the government to ensure health services reach marginalized communities,” she said.

The adviser made these remarks as the chief guest at a views-exchange meeting titled “NGO Engagement in Health Services”, held at the conference room of the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare at the Bangladesh Secretariat.

Fisheries and Livestock Adviser Farida Akhter and Chief Adviser’s Special Assistant for Health and Family Welfare Ministry Professor Dr. Md. Sayedur Rahman spoke as the special guests with Health Secretary Md Saidur Rahman in the chair.

In her speech, Farida Akhter emphasized the need to train midwives to prevent maternal and child mortality, noting that across the country-especially in rural areas-there is heavy reliance on midwives.

She also said that focusing solely on environmental movements is not enough; awareness activities to prevent non-communicable diseases must be increased.

Speakers at the meeting stressed the importance of giving attention to mental health and eye health. They also highlighted the need to ensure that fast-food shops are not located near educational institutions. They pointed out that child marriage affects not only girls but also boys, who are being married off at an early age, and emphasized the need to work on this issue as well.

The speakers underscored the necessity of Universal Health Coverage and expressed hope that health service centers would become more patient-friendly.

At the event, on behalf of the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, a special honor was awarded to Valerie Ann Taylor, planner and founder of Bangladesh’s voluntary physiotherapy organization, the Center for the Rehabilitation of the Paralyzed (CRP).

The MoU was signed at the BSEC Bhaban, Dhaka, Bangladesh, marking a significant step toward mobilizing long-term domestic and international capital for climate-resilient and socially impactful investments.
Under the agreement, UNDP will support BSEC in developing key market infrastructure, including a Sustainable Finance Taxonomy, an Impact Measurement and Monitoring Framework (IMMF), and a Third-Party Verification Mechanism.

These tools are expected to improve transparency, comparability, and credibility of thematic bond issuances, addressing a key concern for global investors, said a press release.

A central pillar of the collaboration is aligning Bangladesh’s thematic bond market with international standards, including those promoted under the EU-supported Global Green Bond Initiative (GGBI), backed by the Green Climate Fund.

Speaking at the ceremony, UNDP Bangladesh Resident Representative Stefan Liller said, “Bangladesh’s capital market has huge potential to raise long-term financing for high-impact environmental and social investments through thematic bonds. As Bangladesh advances beyond LDC status and faces rising climate risks, thematic bonds can help attract essential domestic and global capital. UNDP, in partnership with BSEC, is committed to strengthening the ecosystem needed to scale up these instruments.”

Khondoker Rashed Maqsood, Chairman of BSEC emphasized, “As the regulator, BSEC is committed to ensuring that our market framework evolves by strengthening governance, enhancing transparency, and building investor confidence. BSEC, in partnership with UNDP and other stakeholders, will continue to provide a supportive, predictable, and robust regulatory environment to enable this transformation”.

Highlighting UNDP’s global experience in supporting sustainable finance markets, Maliha Muzammil, Programme Specialist, UNDP Bangladesh, noted that the collaboration will focus on strengthening regulatory frameworks, enhancing issuer capacity, and ensuring robust impact measurement to crowd in private capital aligned with national development and climate priorities.

The ceremony was attended by Farzana Lalarukh, Commissioner, BSEC, Md. Ali Akbar, Commissioner, BSEC, and Owais Parray, Country Economic Advisor, UNDP Bangladesh, who underscored the importance of issuer readiness and credible impact reporting to build a robust pipeline of high-quality thematic bonds. Senior representatives from BSEC and UNDP were also present at the event.

However, outside experts called for more research and emphasised that these kinds of observational studies cannot demonstrate a direct cause-and-effect relationship.

The first study, published in the journal BMJ, said it observed “multiple associations between preservatives that are widely used in industrial foods and beverages on the European market… and higher incidences of overall, breast and prostate cancers”.

The preservatives included nitrites and nitrates, which are often used to cure ham, bacon and sausages.

The second study, published in Nature Communications, also found a link between eating some food additives and developing type 2 diabetes.

Both studies were based on an ongoing research project in which more than 100,000 French people fill out regular questionnaires about their diet.

French epidemiologist Mathilde Touvier, who supervised both studies, told AFP that “consuming products with preservatives does not mean you will immediately develop cancer”.

“But we need to limit how much we are exposed to these products,” she said.

“The message for the general public is to choose the least processed foods when shopping in the supermarket.”

The strongest link found in the first study was between sodium nitrite and prostate cancer, which increased the risk by around a third.

However, the level of increased risk remained moderate. For comparison, heavy smoking raises the risk of getting lung cancer by more than 15 times.

Potassium sorbate, which is commonly used to stop mould and bacteria from growing in food and drink, was associated with twice the risk of developing diabetes.

Researchers not involved in the studies praised its robust methodology but warned it was premature for consumers to change their behaviour until more research is conducted.

Tom Sanders, a nutrition expert at King’s College London, cautioned that the results could be “due to an inability to completely correct for other factors already known to contribute to risk”.

For example, processed meat and alcohol are both already strongly linked to higher cancer rates.

This could mean that it was not sodium metabisulphite — which is used in winemaking to kill yeast — that was causing cancer, but actually drinking the wine, Sanders suggested.

But one option could be to label foods “that use nitrates/nitrites with a health warning”, he added.

The studies were published days after the UK banned daytime TV, radio and online advertisements for unhealthy food and drinks that are high in fat, salt and sugar.

The project was approved by the Executive Committee of the National Executive
Committee (ECNEC) aimed at ensuring modern and specialised medical services
for people in the northern region of the country and thus easing pressure on
hospitals in Dhaka and Rangpur.

The project, titled “Establishment of a 1,000-bed Bangladesh-China Friendship
General Hospital”, has an estimated cost of Taka 2,459.34 crore.

Of the total amount, Taka 179.27 crore will come from the government’s own
resources, while Taka 2,280.07 crore will be financed through external
sources, primarily with financial and technical assistance from the Chinese
government.

The project will be implemented from January 2026 to December 2029 in
Nilphamari sadar upazila under Rangpur division.

Talking to BSS, Planning Commission officials said the objective of the
project is to establish a modern, specialised 1,000-bed general hospital to
ensure quality healthcare for the people of northern Bangladesh.

The hospital will provide integrated general and specialised services,
including nephrology, cardiology, oncology and neurology, enabling effective
treatment of complex and long-term diseases.

Briefing reporters after the day’s ECNEC meeting, Planning Adviser Dr
Wahiduddin Mahmud said the Bangladesh-China Friendship Hospital in Nilphamari
is a strategic and timely initiative.

He said the proposal emerged from discussions at the highest level during the
Chief Adviser’s visit to China, where the Chinese side expressed interest in
supporting the construction of a highly modern hospital in Bangladesh.

Dr Mahmud clarified that the decision to establish the hospital in Nilphamari
was taken by Bangladesh, not China, as part of a broader plan to gradually
decentralise major national facilities from Dhaka.

“If we want real decentralisation, large and advanced institutions-whether
universities, hospitals or technology institutes-must be established outside
Dhaka,” he added.

He noted that Nilphamari’s location in the Rangpur region, traditionally
affected by poverty and seasonal hardship, made it a strategic choice.

The presence of Syedpur Airport nearby is also expected to enhance
accessibility. Given the planned standard of the hospital, he expressed hope
that patients from neighbouring countries may also seek treatment there, as
no similar facility of this level exists in the surrounding region.

Dr Mahmud added that while the project has been approved to facilitate the
signing of a formal agreement with China, the final cost structure may be
adjusted once the exact amount and nature of Chinese assistance are
finalised.

The project also aims to reduce excessive patient pressure on hospitals in
Rangpur and Dhaka through decentralisation of healthcare services, while
ensuring timely and life-saving treatment through modern emergency
facilities, ICU, CCU and HDU units, advanced diagnostic services and state-
of-the-art operation theatres.

In addition, the hospital will contribute to medical research, training and
human resource development, strengthening the overall capacity of the
country’s health sector.

Modern technology, hospital automation, electronic health records (EHR) and
digital health systems will be introduced to improve efficiency and patient
care.

The initiative is also expected to reduce patients’ treatment costs and
travel-related hardship by ensuring equitable access to advanced healthcare
services closer to home.

The main components of the project include a 10-storey main hospital building
with a semi-basement covering approximately 993,691 square feet; a 10-storey
professors’ and senior doctors’ quarters with semi-basement (96,800 square
feet); a 10-storey doctors’ dormitory with studio apartments (65,000 square
feet); a two-storey duplex building for directors; two six-storey nurses’
dormitory buildings; two 10-storey residential buildings for second-and
third-class employees; a two-storey mosque; a one-storey hospital kitchen; a
waste management plant; a five-storey service building; a hospital gas
manifold and Vacuum Insulated Evaporator (VIE) tank facility; a helipad and
automated ambulance system; and a two-storey generator and substation
building.

Explaining the background of the project, officials said Nilphamari district
has a population of around 2.1 million, most of whom live in rural and semi-
urban areas.

Currently, healthcare services in the district mainly depend on the 250-bed
Nilphamari General Hospital and primary healthcare facilities at the upazila
level.

These facilities lack sufficient ICU, HDU, dialysis services, comprehensive
cancer units, neuro-emergency care, cardiac care, burn and plastic surgery
services, as well as specialised maternal and neonatal care.

As a result, critically ill patients are frequently referred to Rangpur
Medical College and Hospital or Dhaka Medical College and Hospital, causing
delays, higher costs and increased risks.

Officials believe the hospital will emerge as a sustainable tertiary-level
healthcare institution, significantly reducing regional disparities in
healthcare access and ensuring timely, quality and life-saving medical
services for millions of people in northern Bangladesh.

A Public Administration Ministry statement said the Bangladesh Civil Service (BCS) health cadre officers were recruited at the entry level through the 48th BCS (Special) examination-2025.

It said 2,984 of the officers were recruited as assistant surgeons 279 people as assistant dental surgeons.

The newly recruited doctors and the dentists will have to undergo basic training at the Bangladesh Public Administration Training Center or at a government-designated training institution and subsequent service related professional training at related organizations to be determined by the government.

The statement said the recruits would then have to work as probation officers for two years and if required their procession could be extended for as long as two more years.

If a probation officer is considered unfit to continue in the service during that period, he or she may be removed from the service in consultation with Bangladesh Public Service Commission (BPSC).

As per the notification, the government recruited 279 people as assistant dental surgeon and 2,984 as assistant surgeon under BCS (Health) cadre.

The Health Emergency Operations Centre and Control Room of the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS) disclosed it in a bulletin today saying no deaths were reported in the aforesaid time.

Of the newly admitted patients, six are from Barishal Division (outside city corporation areas), six from Chattogram Division (outside city corporation areas), three from Dhaka North City Corporation, three from Dhaka South City Corporation and one from Khulna Division (outside city corporation areas).

During the same period, 34 dengue patients were discharged, bringing the total number of released persons this year to 733.

So far in 2026, a total of 893 people have been infected with dengue, including 62.7 percent males and 37.3 percent females, with two deaths reported this year.
A total of 102,861 people were infected and 413 died of dengue in 2025, while in 2024, 101,214 people were infected and 575 died of the disease.