Summary

The project aims to reduce the morbidity and mortality rate among the people living in under-served and poor communities in the Chittagong Hill Tracts. In collaboration with Graus and Ekata the project has been developing the capacity of the Health Forums to sustainably manage services centers.

Program goals

The project has two key aims: first, it works to improve the quality of health in Bandarban District, reducing maternal mortality and increasing the percentage of immunized children. Second, it is establishing effective participatory health service delivery mechanisms in these communities.

Key program components

Concern Universal Bangladesh (CUB) works in isolated communities in the Bandarban District of the Chittagong Hill Tracts. Much of the project area is accessible only by foot, and health services are largely non-existent. In 2009, CUB came together with three local NGOs (GRAUS, EKATA, and YPSA) to establish formal primary health care facilities - called Kollyani Clinics - at an accessible distance from remote Bangladeshi villages. Twenty such clinics have been built in Bandarban and Cox’s Bazar district. Broadly, the health program has the following core components:

Primary care: Primary health care service at the Kollyani Clinics are delivered according to the government’s essential service delivery package, (e.g. antenatal care, postnatal care, reproductive health, family planning, EPI, childhood illness, malaria diagnosis and treatment, and other minor ailments). Each of the Kollyani clinics is open from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., six days a week. Each clinic has one community health worker and one service promoter as full-time staff. Additionally, sixteen community volunteers, both male and female, and a number of trained traditional birth attendants (TTBA) are associated with each of the clinics. A flat user fee of 05 taka (US $ 0.07) is levied on patients, but there is safety net for the disabled and poorest of the poor who cannot afford this rate.

Revolving drug fund: Kollyani has been operating a revolving drug fund to help lower the cost of medication. GRAUS and CUB facilitate the process of collecting drugs from manufacturers at a rate lower than the market price and provides the seed money to purchase drugs at the beginning of the project. The service providers sell the drugs to patients at a lower rate than the market rate and deposit the money into the drug fund.

Behavioral change communication: The program has continuous efforts to increase knowledge and awareness of community people for changing behavior for promoting health.

Capacity building: The health intervention not only invests resource for building capacity of service providers but the community people and volunteers toward health.

Currently benefiting of 606,832 (about 110,333 households) people of Bangladesh.