HIV/AIDS Programme

BRAC's HIV/AIDS programme promotes mass awareness in the community about the disease, provides condoms to high-risk groups, and performs syndromic management of STIs and RTIs in high risk groups to reduce the risk of HIV infection. Programme Organisers, Health Educators, Shastho Shebikas, and Extension Workers (EW) are trained to offer information about HIV/AIDS to the community people and especially the internal migrants on STI / RTI, HIV/AIDS to raise awareness. Popular theatre is also used to raise awareness of the disease within a community. Adolescent boys and girls are targeted in BRAC's awareness campaign, both during secondary school and through the medium of BRAC Education Programme's community and adolescent libraries. BRAC offers information and distributes condoms to brothel-based sex workers, as well as transport workers, industrial labourers and internal migrants. Micro finance loans are also available to commercial sex workers to ensure financial stability and security, and empower them to demand condom usage. This programme is being implemented with SIDA and UNICEF funds.

Malaria Prevention and Control Programme

Malaria is one of the major killing diseases in Bangladesh and the whole population is at risk in high malaria endemic districts. BRAC is providing education on malaria prevention and treatment through it’s health programmes. A special initiative was taken in the hilly areas including awareness-raising activities on malaria control as an EHC component in 1998. In 2002, Activities on Early Diagnosis and Prompt Treatment (EDPT) and distribution of Insecticide Treated Mosquito Nets (ITMN) were initiated in close collaboration with the Mal-VBDC (malaria-vector borne disease control) of Directorate General of Health Services, Government of Bangladesh, MRG (Malaria Research Group) and ICDDR,B. Identified patients receive care at their doorstep through outreach centres and home based care by the Shastho Shebikas (health Volunteers) and Shastho Kormis (front line workers).

Micro-Health Insurance

Micro-health insurance was initiated in July 2001 as a BRAC funded project. Since October 2001, it has been funded by ILO. The goal of this project is to facilitate the poor to affordable and quality health services and to empower women as the entry point for their family's access to health care. This project offers voluntary enrollment to VO, non-VO members and the ultra poor. Premium cost varies with VO membership and family size. Three packages such as a general package, a prepaid pregnancy related care package and an equity package for free enrollment of the ultra poor through this project.

Community Based Arsenic Mitigation Project

BRAC's arsenic mitigation project seeks to raise community awareness, test tubewell water for arsenic contamination, and implement safe drinking water strategies. BRAC has developed five options to ensure safe drinking water. These includes: new and renovated dug wells, rain water harvesters, pond sand filters, deep hand tubewells, and rural pipe water supply systems. This is a UNICEF and Rotary International supported programme.

Early Childhood Development

The Early Childhood Development programme employs advocacy, research, family empowerment and networking to increase the skills and awareness of the caregiver for holistic development of child from conception to five years of age. The project is organised by Bangladesh Shishu Academy and financed by UNICEF.

Saving Newborn Lives

This programme works to improve neonatal health and survival in three rural sub-districts by promoting the use of home based hygienic delivery practices, increasing referrals to health facilities for complicated pregnancies, increasing the number of newborns with complications who receive care at a health facility, and increasing the number of women receiving ante-natal care services. BRAC is using Behaivious Change Communication in some upazilla, while direct service delivery is being used in others to determine which approach performs better. This programme started in 2002 in collaboration with Save the Children (USA).

Public Private Partnership Facilitation Programme

The Public-Private Partnership (PPP) programme, an xperimental intervention of the Ministry of Health and Family welfare supported by DFID, had been designed to improve poor women and children's access to good quality essential health services. The PPP Vision encompasses "Empowering people to take care of their own health making better use of existing resources." The PPP has also drawn on the experiences of GOB-NGO-Community partnerships where BRAC has made significant contributions in creating the provision of Essential Service Delivery making optimum utilisation of available public-private community resources.

BRAC acted as a catalyst to establish six Community Health Schemes (CHSs) based at Government Community Clinics at Brahmanpara upazila of Comilla district in line with the PPP Vision. During the reporting period, BRAC concentrated its facilitation efforts to mobilise the community resources in view of transforming the CHS into a self-managed autonomous community healthcare trust. Following these efforts, six Trustee Boards were registered between July and September 2004. The Trustee Boards collected substantial money from the community. The generated money has been deposited and the CHSs receive the monthly interest as fixed income, which is being used as a subsidy for monthly operational expenses. Income is also generated by the CHSs as programme revenue (user fees, profit from drug sale and pathology services).The programme is supported by Northern Ireland Centre for Health Care Co-operation and Development (Nicare), GoB and DFID.

Realising Rights - Improving Sexual and Reproductive Health in Poor and Vulnerable Populations

BRAC is a partner of Realising Rights which is a Research Programme Consortium supported by DFID. Poor sexual reproducative health is a source of enormous suffering for millions of the world's poorest people. High levels of mortality and ill-health as a result of sexual and reproductive health problems compromise efforts to reduce poverty. Realising Rights aims to respond to these challenges using research to raise the profile of sexual and reproductive health and rights in developing countries and working in partnership to find innovative solutions. Other partners include African Population and Health Research Center (Kenya), BRAC University, EngenderHealth (USA), INDEPTH Network (Ghana), Institute of Development Studies (UK) and London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (UK). For more information on the programme, please visit the Realising Rights website.