maternal health

May 14, 2018

Taking nutrition to over 2000 young women and mothers

Bangladesh has one of the world’s highest rates of maternal and child malnutrition. An estimated six million children are chronically undernourished. Many pregnant women are underweight, anaemic, and consume a nutrient-poor diet.
September 15, 2017

The doctor without a degree saving hundreds of lives in Bangladesh

It is 5:30am in Kaliyakoir, Gazipur, and Nilufar Yasmin’s patients are waiting already outside, lined up beside a sign that says ‘BRAC Shasthya Shebika’. They are farmers and shopkeepers, and they have come to ‘Doctor Apa’ to get their daily dose of tuberculosis medicine before heading to work.
May 25, 2014

Increase in income does not always improve nutritional status

Bangladesh is rated as one of the 36 high malnutrition burdened countries in the world. Although it was widely perceived that malnutrition could be curbed down by increasing peoples’ income, recent studies have shown that it is not always the case. Malnutrition is not only under-nutrition but also over-nutrition, which leads to obesity leading to further health complications such as non-communicable diseases. Moreover, exposure to junk food coupled with a lack of knowledge on nutrition increases the prevalence of malnutrition across the mid and higher quintile of the population.
May 9, 2014

“I believe in what I am doing”

Asma Akhter had her first child at the age of 15. She had little knowledge on infant, young and child feeding (IYCF) practices and used to believe in superstitions and social taboos regarding child care.  She had avoided breastfeeding her daughter within one hour of birth and had wrongly fed other lacteals during her child’s first six months.
November 18, 2013

Making childbirth safer in the big city

GlaxoSmithKline and Save the Children have joined together to create a $1 million Healthcare Innovation Award, awarding $300,000 to BRAC. The funds will be used to pilot BRAC's Manoshi program in Freetown, Sierra Leone, after having tremendous success in the urban slums of Dhaka, Bangladesh.
October 28, 2013

The role of WASH in scaling up nutrition in Bangladesh

The 2011 Lancet series says that about 2.6 billion people lack access to proper toilet facilities and about 980 million young people under 18 live in homes without basic sanitation. Moreover, research has shown that unimproved hygiene, inadequate sanitation, and insufficient and unsafe drinking water account for about seven per cent of the total disease burden and 19 per cent of child mortality worldwide.
May 9, 2013

Mothers writing their own headlines

This week, The New York Times published an article, Africa Holds Worst Rates for First-Day Baby Deaths, Report Says.” I silently groaned, thinking that Africa is often unfairly singled out as a poverty stricken, dismal place. These headlines bother me for the mere fact that there are not enough headlines highlighting the qualities that make the continent far from dismal.
May 7, 2013

No mother stands alone

BRAC USA launched a campaign called No Mother Stands Alone to rally support for adapting BRAC's proven maternal health program in Bangladesh to countries in Sub-Saharan Africa.
April 3, 2013

We’ve made staggering progress in maternal health in Bangladesh. Where next?

100,000 in 1990 to just 194 in 2010, while other indicators like neonatal and under-five mortality have also fallen. While those numbers are still too high (in many developed countries, the rates for all are in single digits), the change is still staggering. Bangladesh is close to reaching the fourth and fifth of the UN’s Millennium Development Goals regarding child and maternal mortality.
July 24, 2012

Time to address maternal depression: A crucial concern for public health practitioners.

Having a child can be one happiest event in a woman's life. While life with a new baby can be enthralling and worthwhile, it can also be difficult and stressful at times. A woman goes though many physical, social and emotional changes when she is expecting, and after she gives birth
April 25, 2012

Assessing BRAC’s Health Program in Tanzania

Jade Lamb, a Masters student at Duke University, recently wrote a research paper on BRAC's community health promoter model in Tanzania. Below is an abstract of her paper.Life expectancy in Tanzania is 58 years for women, and 53 for men (WHO 2011).
December 16, 2011

Hope In The Slums: Inside A Birthing Hut with Deborah Roberts

The following post was written by ABC News Correspondent Deborah Roberts on the Million Moms Challenge blog about her recent trip to Bangladesh to see BRAC's programs working to save the lives of mothers and children