Urgent Care: A Missing Piece in Healthcare
Author: Dr. Ishtique Zahid, Senior Technical Advisor, Spreeha Foundation
Photo: Doctor and Center-in-Charge providing care to a patient at Spreeha’s urgent care center
In Bangladesh, healthcare faces a fundamental gap - one that many don’t notice until they experience it firsthand. The concept of urgent care, a critical bridge between primary care and emergency services, is nearly absent. This missing piece creates cascading problems for both patients and the healthcare system.
When someone suffers a non-life-threatening injury - a burn, a cut, or a mild trauma -they often have no choice but to visit emergency rooms designed for critical cases or poorly equipped local pharmacies. This situation not only overwhelms emergency departments but also delays care for both critical and minor cases. Patients with minor injuries spend hours waiting in stressful and unsuitable environments, while doctors and resources that should be focused on saving lives are stretched thin. Meanwhile, local pharmacies, are often small and lack basic medical facilities such as sterilization, medical equipment, and examination beds. This leads to complications, such as wound infections, which prolong treatment durations and necessitate extended courses of antibiotics. In some cases, the situation escalates to the point where the pharmacist refers the patient to an emergency room, having been unable to manage the condition effectively.
A Moment That Changed My Perspective
I started my career as an emergency room physician at a 500-bed medical college hospital. Over three years, I witnessed countless moments of distress, but one day stands out vividly.
One morning a young construction worker was rushed into the ER after falling from a six-story building. Semi-conscious and bleeding profusely, he went into cardiac arrest as I began CPR, fighting desperately to save his life. Blood was streaming from his mouth, and I shouted urgently for an ET tube. The room transformed into a battlefield, with everyone moving in frantic coordination to keep him alive.
Amid this life-and-death chaos, a five-year-old girl walked in with her parents, needing just a stitch for a minor cut on her hand. I caught sight of her hiding behind her mother, her wide eyes filled with fear as she watched the intensity of the ER unfold around her. It was as if two worlds collided - one fighting for survival, the other seeking comfort for a small injury.
It was an hour before I could attend to her, and with one stitch, she was sent home. But she shouldn’t have been there at all. Her care belonged in a community urgent care center, not in an overwhelmed ER where she witnessed such distressing scenes.
Bridging the Gap: Sneho Health
Photo: Exterior view of a Spreeha Urgent Care Center located in Dhaka
For the past 15 years, I have been designing healthcare solutions to make care more accessible. Along this journey, I’ve had the privilege of working with Tazin Shadid - a mentor, colleague, and friend. Together, we’ve envisioned and implemented innovative healthcare solutions, ranging from conventional hospitals to diagnostic marketplaces, each addressing unique challenges in healthcare.
Tazin’s expertise in human-centered design and technology, combined with my background in healthcare service management, created a synergy that bridged technology and healthcare. Through countless discussions and on-the-ground insights, we identified a glaring gap: the absence of localized urgent care services tailored to community needs.
This realization led to the creation of Sneho Health, a hyper-local, tech-enabled urgent healthcare network designed to serve immediate local communities. Sneho centers bridge the gap between overcrowded hospitals and under-equipped pharmacies by offering accessible, quality, and patient-centered care. Each center is equipped with facilities for first aid, urgent care, patient beds, waiting zones, doctor consultations, drug corners, and pathology sample collection services.
Sneho Health is a collaboration between Spreeha Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing affordable and quality healthcare to low- and middle-income communities and AmarLab, our health-tech startup that makes health diagnostics as easy as ordering food from home so that people can get lifesaving tests done anytime anywhere and make informed decision for a healthier and longer life.
A Vision for Accessible Healthcare
Sneho Health is a step toward the vision - a solution that prioritizes patients and ensures that even the smallest health needs are met with empathy. The five-year-old girl I treated that day deserved better. So does every individual in Bangladesh. Sneho Health is our commitment to creating a system where everyone can access the care they need, close to home, without unnecessary delays or distress.
About the Author
Dr. Ishtique Zahid is leading Spreeha’s tech-enabled hyper-local urgent care network as Senior Technical Advisor. He is a physician and entrepreneur on a mission to make healthcare accessible to everyone, everywhere. He also co-founded AmarLab, a health-tech startup that simplifies health diagnostics, making it as easy as ordering food from home.