Center for Health Market Innovations (CHMI)

Blogs tagged: Bangladesh

Tom Feeny
Posted by Tom Feeny
Nov 6 2012

BEIJING SYMPOSIUM: Dispelling the myths about Informal Providers

Part 1 of a series of posts about the 2nd Global Symposium on Health Systems Research

Informal providers in a Dhaka market

Informal providers, like ‘the poor’, have historically proven to be a largely elusive population within health and development. Confounding neat categorisation within the already blurry boundaries of the ‘private sector’, informal providers are typically the subject of sweeping generalisations whose credibility rests precariously on very basic perceptions of these individuals being simply ‘outside the institutional framework’ and therefore ‘unregulated’, ‘disorganised’ and ‘uneducated’.

Maria Belenky
Posted by Maria Belenky
May 21 2012

Smiling Sun Franchise gives patients a lot to smile about

A visit to Bangladesh’s largest private healthcare network

Smiling Sun Clinic

The red and yellow color scheme is evident everywhere you look. Brightly painted lines run along every room and hallway, and a smiling sun adorns window curtains and posters displaying health information. We are at the Surjer Hashi Clinic outside of Dhaka, one of the 325 clinic networked by the Smiling Sun Franchise Program (SSFP), a USAID-funded initiative that has grown to become the largest private healthcare network in the country.

Nadira Sultana
Posted by Nadira Sultana
Apr 5 2012

Forgotten No More

Making health care available for the most marginalized groups in Bangladesh

Women receiving care from mobile medical units in the river basin areas

Last month, I visited Young Power in Social Action (YPSA), a local NGO based in Chittagong city, to experience its health care program. I found YPSA provides health care to different marginalized groups including garment workers, street based sex workers and women and children of river basin areas of Chittagong rural areas too. Built on the banks of the Karnaphuli River, the city is home to Bangladesh's busiest seaport and has a population of over 5.5 million, making it the second largest city in the country.

Maria Belenky
Posted by Maria Belenky
Apr 3 2012

Informal health sector: friend or foe?

CHMI-sponsored studies shed new light on informal provision of health care

Informal Provider Study Review Meeting

In rural Mirzapur, one of Bangladesh’s 500 upazilas—or sub-districts—accessing a formal health provider is a tall order. Public facilities such as the Upazila-level Health Complexes are often ill-equipped and overcrowded and formal private practitioners are few and very far between. This is a scenario that plays out across Bangladesh, a country that suffers from a medical human resource shortage in the hundreds of thousands. Who fills the gap? By and large, the task falls to informal providers.

Nadira Sultana
Posted by Nadira Sultana
Mar 8 2012

Increasing Access to Health Information for the Visually Impaired through ICTs

Part of the DAISY team of visually impaired

On March 4-6, I had the opportunity to travel to Chittagong, the 2nd city of Bangladesh, to visit a local NGO called Young People in Social Action (YPSA). YPSA provides a range of health and other social services for diverse groups of people, including the disabled, particularly those who are visually impaired who, at 3 million people, make up almost 21% of the Bangladeshi population.

Nadira Sultana
Posted by Nadira Sultana
Jan 9 2012

ICT in Health: Bangladesh Is Moving Ahead

The Daily Star, the famous English daily newspaper in Bangladesh, in association with technology and business partners, organized a two-day leadership colloquium in Dhaka on 6-7 January 2012 on “ICT in Health.” This was the first colloquium of its kind in the country, with both international and national experts discussing the current practice of ICT in health care globally.

Nadira Sultana
Posted by Nadira Sultana
Oct 27 2011

Aurobindo Child Hospital Dinajpur

An example of dedication to neonatal and child health

I recently visited Aurobindo Child Hospital in the Dinajpur district, nearly 350 kilometer North-West from the capital Dhaka of Bangladesh. The hospital is built on land given by Sri Aurobindo’s Ashram (a spiritual hermitage). Sri Aurobindo, born in Kolkata in 1872, had a vibrant and distinguished, known for his service, politics and spiritual leadership. After his death, his followers voluntarily built ashram’s in many different places of India and Bangladesh, many of which are still dedicated to serving humanity through the provision of health care.

Nadira Sultana
Posted by Nadira Sultana
Oct 14 2011

Kollyani Clinics - A Community-led Health Care Model for Remote Areas in Bangladesh

During the last week of September, I traveled to Bandarban, a remote tribal area of Bangladesh, to visit a health care model called Kollyani, which means “doing well”. Bandarban is one of the most remote districts in terms of its geography: forest, hills and peaks, and very limited road access. The majority of the population of less than 300,000 is from thirteen tribal and ethnic groups and the languages and customs are distinct from the mainstream population of Bangladesh.

Nadira Sultana
Posted by Nadira Sultana
Jun 27 2011

Microfinance Program Contributes to Achieving Health MDGs

A Look at TMSS in Bangladesh

From June 18 to 20, I visited TMSS (Thengamara Mohila Sabuj Shangstha), one of the larger national-level non-governmental women development organizations working in remote villages in Bangladesh to improve the socio-economic condition of the local population, especially women who may suffer from maternal and reproductive health issues.

The Beginning of the Microfinance Program
In the early 1980s, TMSS started it social amplification program from the village of Thengamara in the Bogra district in north-west of Bangladesh.

Nadira Sultana
Posted by Nadira Sultana
May 18 2011

Community Health workers institutionalize referral network from remote village to hospital

In remote tribal areas, trained local workers can contribute to achieving MDG 5

Postnatal mom with baby

Since I joined CHMI earlier this year, I have seen a number of programs that use community level health workers to deliver key interventions that prevent maternal and childhood morbidity and mortality--a hot topic recently.

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