As we start a new year, physicians must be prepared and start to look at themselves and their profession in a new light. After 35 years of independence, it is very unfortunate that major percentage of the our people who are living below the poverty level are deprived of better medical care .In the previous tenure of our leadership, we realized that the real causes of this dismayed health care condition of our community were due to inadequate health infrastructures , paucity of instruments and Medicine and the shortage of health care providers including qualified and skilled doctors, nurses and other health related personnel. Immediately after resuming power , we took huge plan to improve the general and special health care system .As you elected us again, undoubtedly it indicates that you have supported our scheme and started to have some results of our health reform.

Bangladeshi physicians had many great successes stories in last few years, including lowering child-mother mortality rate, increasing nutritional status of children and pregnant women, giving the highest EPI coverage, keeping the prevalence of HIV /AIDS low , reducing the number of patients visiting abroad for treatment etc. Because of great efforts given by our physicians; now Bangladesh is considered as one of the most promising countries to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) especially in the health sector but many more challenges still lie ahead. We are under thread of some emerging diseases; like Dengue ,SARS and under threat of Bird Flue and HIV and continuing our fight against natural calamities like; flood, cyclone etc . From the beginning, the BMA is giving immense effort to prepare our physicians to fight against these alarming enemies and we encourage all physicians to participate with us .

Physician , as a profession has a great image. There are some accusations and criticisms against our physicians about their integrity towards their profession. I am bold enough to admit that a very few of our colleagues might have some divergence in their practicing behavior but most of the doctors are working for the patients with all their might . There is no doubt about the quality of doctors but I agree , there is overall lack of communication skill of our physicians which might give rise some unwanted and unjustified blame against them. To overcome this shortcoming ,I can assure that in near future BMA is going to take some noble initiatives to promote high level of moral and ethical background of every physicians ;so more people will be attracted to go into our health care delivery system
As we begin New Year 2006, may you all be embraced with joy and peace. In this occasion, I convey all good wishes to our members and the association to progress to its highest points. .