Countdown to 2030 is working in Bangladesh through our partnership with the Global Financing Facility, icddr,b, and Johns Hopkins University. 

CC by: bjornar_bjornar via flickr, Bangladesh

Background

Bangladesh experienced one of the fastest declines in maternal and newborn mortality during the years 2000-2020, with a 60% decrease in maternal mortality ratio from 2000-2017 and a 55% decrease in neonatal mortality ratio from 2000-2019. This was partly due to a substantial reduction in poverty, but even controlling for this Bangladesh outperformed similar countries. Bangladesh’s health strategy for 2016-2021 was the Health, Nutrition and Population Strategic Investment Plan (HNPSIP), which has guided Bangladesh’s partnership with the Global Financing Facility. 

 

Planned research for 2023-2025

The Countdown collaboration will work with analysts from Bangladesh’s health management information system to build capacity for advanced analytic techniques such as Bayesian and spatial analysis, imputation of missing data, and machine learning. These techniques will be applied the government’s existing databases and to large survey data, in order to yield new understanding of key issues such as equity, coverage and quality of care.

Achievements for 2020-2022

During 2020-2022, Countdown conducted a study in Bangladesh and six other countries to understand the drivers of the major declines in maternal and newborn mortality over the past decades, as part of the Global Health Exemplars studies of Gates Ventures. Research findings are available online and will be published in BMJ Global Health in 2023.  The Countdown exemplar study in Bangladesh was a partnership between icddr,b and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. All the exemplar studies had a similar mixed methods design. 

Partnership

Shams El Arifeen
Ema Akter
Manzoor Ahmed Hanifi
Aniqa Tasnim Hossain
Ahmed Ehsanur Rahman
Md. Hafizur Rahman
Mohammad Sohel Shomik
Agbessi Amouzou
Nadia Akseer
Robert Black
Elizabeth Hazel