HEALTH
Access to healthcare is important to families in Bangladesh in order to maximize their ability to work and provide for their families. Existing healthcare facilities are often too expensive and too far away for most people to access. PSDI is currently able to provide basic healthcare and health education in the two areas we serve and is hoping to expand services by adding small clinics and additional outreach programs.
Our Integrated Health Care Program (IHCP) is a combination of basic health care clinics and educational outreach activities. What we have learned through our years of experience operating health care centers and outreach programs is that this combination of treatment and prevention education services is an effective and efficient way to obtain improved short term and long range health outcomes for those we serve.
Our IHCP is currently operating in two of the four districts we serve - Kishoreganj and Netrokona.
The activities in Kishoreganj include maintaining eight outreach centers serving an average of 19,000 people per year with a focus on women and children. Primary medical care is provided at the centers through four Medical Assistants working six days per week from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. The extreme poor are provided a health card which gives them access to free medical care and discounted medicines. Others pay a fee based on their income. Patients who require additional medical care will be seen by a qualified doctor who visits the centers once a month and/or will be referred to local government health care services. Medical Assistants focus on immediate health care needs of families such as diabetes, malnourishment, diarrhea, fever, and respiratory illness, monitoring the progress of pregnant women and newborns, and providing vitamins, immunizations and other medicines to women and children.
Preventative health care is provided through education and outreach that will take place at the centers run by trained health care workers for poor families in the areas served. Topics range from general health issues such as nutrition, hygiene, safe drinking water, breastfeeding, puberty and HIV to social issues such as family planning and child marriage. In addition, existing midwives are trained on pre-natal, delivery and post-natal best practices. Together, components of the program improve the health status of the poor by creating access to quality affordable medical care.
A collaboration was formed between PSDI, the Poverty Eradication Program in Bangladesh, local Bangladeshi people and the Japanese government to build a hospital in a rural area in Netrokona in 2015. The hospital is equipped with an outpatient department, rooms for six beds, doctor and staff rooms, a dispensary and a pathological laboratory. It is open seven days a week. The hospital is serving 27 surrounding villages and 25,000 people. They are currently seeing an average of 670 patients a month with that number increasing month to month as villagers become accustom to the services being available.
In addition to the hospital, we operate a small clinic in Netrokona, the T. Ahmad Clinic, serving 2,400 patients per year.
Future plans include the reopening of clinics in the two other areas we serve in the coming years. Each clinic will serve hundreds of families, both poor and middle class. The cost of opening and operating a clinic is $20,000/yr. Any donation makes a difference:
$10 - covers prescriptions for three poor families
$20 - provides funding for a medical test for a family
$50 - half of the monthly cost of a social worker providing outreach education
$75 - covers the cost of a medical doctor for a month
Won’t you help us provide this critical need?
United Nations Sustainable Development Goals Addressed: Goal #3 - Good Health & Well Being; Goal #5 - Gender Equality; Goal #10 - Reduced Inequalities; Goal #17 - Partnerships for the Goals
Meet Roytun Vanu, a woman from one of the extremely poor families that benefitted from this program.
She has a husband and six children and they all live with her parents. She has been suffering from asthma, back pain and physical weakness for some years. In October, 2018 she was given a health card and visited the clinic immediately. She was able to receive the medicines she needed for only $3.36, a 40% discount. Roytun says, “I have been taking medicines regularly and am feeling better gradually. The initiative of PSDI and its donors is really appreciated and we are grateful for their contributions. We hope the project will continue for a long time so that many poor of our area could be benefitted.”
Roytun is a success story.
