[Op-Ed] Why are we still struggling to make health insurance work?

By Professor. Rumana Huque Bangladesh has committed itself to achieving universal health coverage (UHC), ensuring that everyone can access necessary health services without suffering financial hardship. Yet, out-of-pocket payments continue to finance most healthcare, forcing families to borrow money, sell assets, or forego treatment altogether. Recognising this challenge, the government’s Health Care Financing Strategy identified
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[Op-Ed] Rethinking Bangladesh’s health sector reform after SWAp

Written by Professor Rumana Huque After more than two and a half decades of being in operation, the Health, Population and Nutrition Sector Programme (HPNSP) was discontinued by the interim government last year. Operating under the health ministry since 1998, the HPNSP oversaw basic health, nutrition and family planning services across the country. The concern
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[OP-ED] Bangladesh’s next health breakthrough

A mother in a rural village should not have to travel hundreds of kilometres to Dhaka for a service that ought to be available at her local  health facility. Yet this remains the reality for many Bangladeshis. While the country has earned global recognition for reducing maternal and child mortality and expanding immunisation coverage, millions still struggle
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The Budget That Shrinks: How Bangladesh’s Health Allocations Disappear Over Time

Download PDF here or read the HTML version Written by Prof. Rumana Huque & Abdullah M. Rafi Every year, Bangladesh announces a new national budget with promises of stronger healthcare, expanded services, and increased investment in public wellbeing. Headlines celebrate larger allocations for the health sector, policymakers speak of reform, and percentages are highlighted to
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A Costly Assumption: What Every BDHS Researcher Should Know Before Combining Survey Waves

[PDF Version]  Written by Salina Siddiqua, Dr. S M Abdullah, Dr. Rumana Huque The Growing Importance of BDHS in Bangladesh Research The Bangladesh Demographic and Health Survey (BDHS) has become one of the most influential sources of evidence for health and social science research in Bangladesh. Over the past two decades, BDHS data have been extensively used to
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Air Pollution is Changing: The Hidden Climate Risks We are Not Talking About

Read the blog here or download the PDF version Written by Sirat-E-Rowshan Islam (Research Uptake & Communication Officer, ARK Foundation) When we think about air pollution in Bangladesh, we are talking about the same few things: the black smoke from an old bus, the smoggy skyline in winter, nicotine smoke from cigarettes, or the chimneys
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When Cities Grow, Movement Shrinks: Urbanisation and Physical Activity in Bangladesh

Find the PDF here Written by Riona Khan and S M Abdullah Imagine a young garment worker in Dhaka. S/he wakes up early, boards a crowded bus, sits for long hours at a sewing machine, returns home exhausted, and spends the evening indoors. The day is full for them, but physically, they have barely moved. Conversely, imagine
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The Karlson-Holm-Breen (KHB) Method: Why Logistic Mediation Results Might Be Misleading?

Read pdf here Written by Ibrahim Hasan and S M Abdullah A simple story with a built-in complicated problem Assume being a health researcher, you are studying health inequality. Particularly, you are interested to know the non-communicable disease (NCD) outcome status due to educational attainment exposure. Your preliminary logistic regression results showed that people with
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Fragmentation in urban health service provision? A plurality of providers is the answer

Read it here or download PDF  Abdullah Rafi, from ARK Foundation in Bangladesh, discusses how the perceived fragmentation of urban healthcare in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) should be viewed as a symptom of unmanaged plurality rather than a system failure. The majority of the world’s population is now urbanised, with 55% of humanity currently
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Precision at Scale: Managing 3,559 Survey Clusters in the World’s Largest Refugee Settlement

Find the pdf version here or read it here By  Zunayed Al Azdi When we began planning the Routine EPI Coverage Evaluation Survey in the Rohingya camps of Cox’s Bazar, the numbers were daunting. Thirty-three camps. 3,559 clusters. More than 25,000 households. Over 100 field personnel operating in one of the most densely populated refugee settlements
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