The World Medical Association (WMA) has urged Bangladesh to curb attacks on health workers, often by relatives after a patient’s death, a pattern that has repeatedly shut hospital emergency units.
The WMA, a global federation of national medical associations, has written to Prime Minister Tarique Rahman and the Minister of Health and Family Welfare. It said reports from Bangladesh showed a broad pattern of physical assaults, threats and vandalism against physicians, other health staff and facilities, not a series of isolated incidents.
The research supports that picture. A national study by the Centre for Injury Prevention and Research, Bangladesh, backed by the International Committee of the Red Cross and published in 2023, surveyed 1,703 health personnel at 61 public and private facilities in all eight divisions. More than 80 per cent had experienced or witnessed violence at work. Patients’ relatives or attendants carried out 71.9 per cent of the incidents, and patients themselves 16.8 per cent.
A separate peer-reviewed study, published in BMJ Open in 2024, found that 67.3 per cent of 441 physicians surveyed at Dhaka Medical College Hospital had faced workplace violence.
The attacks have continued this year. In June, relatives attacked an intern doctor at Rangpur Medical College Hospital after a patient died in the coronary care unit, and doctors shut emergency services in response, according to Bangladesh’s The Business Standard. In May, a doctor was beaten at Shariatpur Sadar Hospital after a heart patient died, and police later arrested several people over the assault. Intern doctors in Bogura who protested another attack that month said their 500-bed hospital was treating about 3,000 patients.
WMA President Dr Jacqueline Kitulu said violence against health care harms far more than the people attacked. It interrupts treatment, pushes away the staff a health system relies on and weakens public trust in medicine, she said. “No physician, nurse or another health worker should have to fear for their safety,” Kitulu said.
The WMA asked the government to:
- adopt measures to protect health personnel and facilities
- investigate every attack and prosecute those responsible
- strengthen prevention, reporting and monitoring
- tackle the causes of the violence within the health sector
Bangladesh drafted two laws on the issue in October 2025. The Health Service Workers and Institutions Protection Ordinance 2025 would make attacks on health workers punishable by up to five years in prison, rising to seven years for assaults causing grievous injury. A companion Patient Protection and Remedy Ordinance 2025 would make gross negligence that causes serious harm or death a criminal offence. It would also create special tribunals for patients’ complaints.
In June, health policy experts told The Business Standard that the country still lacked a dedicated law protecting health workers and facilities.
The 2023 national study found that only about a quarter of health workers who faced violence reported it, even though 89 per cent said a reporting system existed.
