Our achievements in universal health coverage

Our work has fed into policy-making and the planning of healthcare service delivery in Bangladesh. 

Our studies have generated evidence to support policy-making as well as tools to facilitate the planning of healthcare services. We have also provided direct input into policy-making, for example feeding into the Government of Bangladesh’s first healthcare financing strategy.

Examples of our achievements include:

GIS mapping of healthcare facilities

• We have developed a GIS-based tool to map the physical location of healthcare facilities and compare their distribution with that of local populations.
• We used this tool to map the distribution and capacity of emergency obstetric and newborn care facilities, which has been used to guide the development of services.
• Information about the location and expertise of facilities in five cities is now freely available online through the Urban Health Atlas.

Women’s rights

• SAFE: Growing up safe and healthy is the only study showing a statistically significant reduction in spousal violence against women and girls at the community level.
• Drawing heavily upon SAFE, a scaled up intervention has been funded in other Dhaka slums.
• Based on SAFE’s research and advocacy, campaigners filed litigation that resulted in a High Court order banning the two-finger test and establishing a protocol on medico-legal evidence collection in rape cases.