Bangladesh: Health: Maternal, Neonatal and Child Health

Bangladesh has made significant progress in reducing mortality and morbidity rates over the last few decades as a whole, and in particular BRAC has had particular sucess in reducing mother and infant mortality and morbidity rates in Bangladesh. BRAC has pioneered health interventions in BRAC projects aimed at improving the conditions of women and children, as well as reducing birth rates. The interests of women and children are at the heart of BRAC‘s work.

In 2005, we launched the Maternal, Neonatal and Child Health Project (MNCH), a project  with a focus on maternal, neo-natal and child health, in order to to reduce persistently high mortality and morbidity rate of mothers and children in Bangladesh.  Key features of this programme included capacity development of human resources in community health promotion, the empowerment of women and appropriate support groups, provision of maternal, neonatal and child health services and development of referrals to health facilities nearby.

Manoshi urban MNCH is a five year MNCH project launched in January 2007. This project aims to reduce maternal, neonatal and child mortality in urban slums.  Funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, this project is scaling up in phases to serve slum populations in Dhaka, Chittagong, Sylhet, Barisal, Khulna and Rajshani cities including some peri-slum areas.

One of the innovations of this project is the establishment of delivery centres designed to provide privacy and maintain improved hygiene and cleanliness during delivery. Also these delivery centres provide critical access of pregnant women to medical expertise and enable quick diagnosis of pregnancy/ delivery complications and referrals to hospitals in such cases.

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