Op-Ed: Ensuring equity in health sector

By Professor Rumana Huque & Abdullah M. Rafi Bangladesh today stands as a shining example in global health sector. Two decades ago, more than 400 mothers died for every 100,000 live births; that figure has now fallen by more than half. Similarly, neonatal mortality has dropped from 44 per thousand to 20. This achievement is
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Safeguarding and Gender in Public Health Research: Reflections from the Field

Abdullah M. Rafi, Samina Huque Read PDF here   Safeguarding has increasingly become a central concern in public health research. At ARK Foundation, we see it not just as a set of rules, but as a commitment to ensuring the safety and dignity of everyone, spanning from researchers to office staff, across every stage of
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Harnessing mHealth to End TB: A Digital Prescription for a Persistent Challenge

Abdullah Muhammad Rafi, Shakhawat Hossain Rana Read PDF here Let’s start the story with a few numbers. First of all, every year, 379,000 people in Bangladesh are newly affected by Tuberculosis, that’s more than 1,000 cases a day, and out of the almost four hundred thousand patients, more than 44,000 people die each year. Imagine
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How Active are the Residents of Dhaka? Perceptions and Challenges in Maintaining Physical Activity in Urban Bangladesh

By Umme Salma Anee, CHORUS Research Assistant, ARK Foundation To implement a CHORUS Innovation Fund project in Bangladesh, the team at ARK Foundation has been working with a diverse range of stakeholders, including policy makers, community leaders, teachers, Imams, youth groups, adolescents, guardians, pregnant women, elderly women, and people with physical challenges, to address barriers
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Between Progress and Pitfalls: Fixing Bangladesh’s Urban Health Crisis

 By Abdullah M. Rafi (published in The Business Standard on 15 May, 2025) Bangladesh, one of the fastest-growing economies in the world according to the World Bank, has identified health as both a priority and a persistent challenge. Article 15(a) of the country’s constitution reflects this commitment by guaranteeing healthcare as a fundamental right for
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World Tuberculosis Day: Effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of an mHealth intervention (mTB-Tobacco) for smoking cessation in people with tuberculosis (Quit4TB Trial)

By Ai Keow Lim, Fahmidur Rahman & Maham Zahid  What is TB and how smoking impacts TB Tuberculosis (TB) is a bacterial infection spread through respiratory droplets dispersed into the air, when someone with TB coughs and sneezes. Smoking increases the chances of contracting TB infection and TB disease. TB patients who smoke are more
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Fighting TB on the Frontlines: Voices from the Ground

Abdullah M. Rafi Read the PDF Version Mr. Mahmud (pseudonym), 59, the Tuberculosis & Leprosy Controller Assistant (TLCA) at one of the TB centers on the outskirts – a 70-kilometer drive from the capital Dhaka – reflecting on his journey in combating TB, asserted that if people stopped using tobacco products, the number of TB
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ARK’s SIMPLE Solution to the Urban Data Dearth

Abdullah Muhammad Rafi On December of 2022, the Government of Bangladesh declared its next major initiative – the Smart Bangladesh Initiative – with a view to building a Smart Nation by 2041. Government’s Aspire to Innovate (a2i) program defines a ‘smart nation’ as “harnessing emerging technologies, networks, and data to create tech-enabled solutions that contribute
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The Transgender Community and Disparities of Urban Health Care System: The Untold Stories

A transgender named Sumaiya (pseudonym) became sick while collecting money for a long time under the scorching heat of summer. She went to buy medicine from a road side drug store. While buying medicine, she heard many witticisms saying, ‘You also get sick!’ the drug sellers generally compel the transgenders to leave quickly as the
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Urban Dispensaries and Primary Healthcare in Dhaka

By Umme Salma Anee, Masroor Salauddin, Sadika Afrin, Faiaz Chowdhury, Nabila Binth Jahan, Deepa Barua, Rumana Huque, Helen Elsey Urban regions in Bangladesh are now more densely populated as a result of migration and industrialization. With a population rise of 3.26% from 2022 to 2023, Dhaka, the country’s largest metropolis that is growing day by
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