Global Women's Voices: Share Personal Stories

Tasmima Hossain, Bangladesh

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For an overwhelming majority of women in Bangladesh, reproductive health care and family planning simply do not exist. Governments have clinics which offer services free of charge all over the country, even in the most remote villages, but there is an acute shortages of doctors and supplies in these clinics. No ambulances, no x-ray machines, no stretchers.

The clinics are not maintained at all, and lack even basic supplies such as antiseptics and cotton. They are totally unsupplied and doctors do not want to be posted outside the city. Even in the capital, Dhaka, hospitals are poorly equipped, and undersupplied.

Bangladesh is one of the poorest and most densely populated countries in the world, and we have less than five percent literacy rate. And on top of all these things, Bangladesh is also one of the most corrupt nations in the world. When you are fighting such social illnesses as poverty, illiteracy, over population, and corruption, women’s health is not given the attention and priority they deserve. In the poorest villages, one has to deal with the issue of child marriage.

Girls are still largely viewed as financial burdens on families, though female infanticide is not nearly a common of a practice as it is in India. In Bangladesh, families deal with the burden of having daughters through child marriage. Girls are married off young, anywhere from the age of 10 to 14 years old. They give birth at such young ages, and their children are born with malnutrition. By birth from poverty, both mother and child are at a severe disadvantage. So you have young childbirth cases, no family planning, and each of these women have as many as four to five children each. Every time a woman gets pregnant, her life is automatically at risk. The maternal mortality rate in this country is horrendous.

Even before the issue of childbearing arises, women in these villages do not have access to supplies for their periods. They have no sanitary napkins or feminine hygiene products. Women in the villages use rags. And they often use the same piece over and over again. They are washed and dried in the sun. But access to clean water is a luxury many villages do not have, so these rags are washed with dirty water. Urinary tract infections are rampant. And women in the villages do a lot of work, around the house and in the field. Their infections are further aggravated by hard labor.

The most common and widely used service for delivering babies in rural areas is the use of midwives. These women have nor formal or professional training, and are largely self and experience taught. An overwhelming majority of rural women deliver babies in their homes. They pay the midwives with anything they have- food, saris, and at times cash. You cannot imagine the poverty we are up against.

Basic reproductive health care is largely unavailable to Bangladeshi women. Just look at our population- it is out of control. When and if a woman makes it to a clinic in time, she has no money and the doctors have no supplies.

Doctors tell patients of the supplies they need to treat patients, and then the patient is responsible for getting supplies to the dtcors. We’re talking about very basic supplies, things like syringes and medicine. You are talking about women who are so poor they cannot feed their own families. How can they possibly have any money to buy medical supplies? And from where?

There is corruption from the bottom up all over this country. Often, the doctors will even ask patients for bribes for their services. They are underpaid, too. They are trying to feed their families, too. So you have this cycle of destruction where everyone is poor and taking advantage of whatever resources they can, even if it is a poor woman.

Individual doctors do make monthly trips into rural areas, but they only reach a handful of women at the right time. In the most remote villages in the country, communication is a huge problem. How do you access th

updated: 7/14/2004