Village doctors are the dominant health care providers in rural areas of Bangladesh. icddr,b has previously tested interventions to improve the quality of their services – especially training on acceptable practice and the creation of a franchise called ShasthyaSena (health soldier). But training alone met with limited success. To improve the quality of these services, icddr,b has been testing an mHealth intervention that linked ShasthyaSenas to qualified physicians through a call centre. This brief documents the successes and challenges faced during the first year of implementation of the mHealth intervention.
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The large informal private sector in Bangladesh consists of many different types of partially qualified and unqualified practitioners, providing low quality care. Irrespective of their inadequate treatment practices, the informal healthcare practitioners are quite popular among a wide cross-section of the rural population. The perceived costs associated with the different healthcare options are probably important factors determining healthcare seeking behaviour. Thus it is important to examine the economic consequences of their utilisation in Bangladesh.
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This research brief focuses on the health-seeking behaviour of the people in Chakaria, a rural area in Bangladesh. Information was collected from 1,000 households during February 2007 on the type of illnesses the villagers suffered from during the two weeks preceding the survey and their associated health seeking behavior
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In FHS's first phase, we helped form a network of the village doctors (VDs) named ShasthyaSena (Health Soldiers) in Chakaria, a remote rural area in the southeast of Bangladesh in 2008. The ShasthyaSena intervention was devised as a regulatory strategy using a social franchise model with the aim of improving and influencing the performance of village doctors.
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This research brief focuses on a pilot community empowerment tool that was developed and implementedin a union in Chakaria, a remote coastal area near the southeastern tip of Bangladesh.
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