On 8th June 2010, I visited Narsingdi to study Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA)’s project. It launched the Safe Motherhood Promotion Project (SMPP) there.
Therefore, I want to report what I studied there.
Bangladesh is the highest population density. However, when we go out of Dhaka, we can see a lot of nature, for example, forest, river, and lake.
It takes half and an hour to go from Dhaka to Narsingdi by car. There is one of the famous cities for jackfruit, the biggest fruit in the world. People in Narsingdi make their money by selling those food to Dhaka..
The people in a village make a group to protect pregnant mother. I attended one of the community meetings.
Their activities are the following.
1. grasping which mother is pregnant
2. education to them (for example promotion of maternity medical check)
3. financial and medical support for them to delivery at home or in hospital
The meeting consists of members who support this group, pregnant mothers, midwifes, and a district official staff.
They make their fund from unique way. They are donated one or two jackfruit from member. They sell them and make money for their activity. I bought one of them, and donated for the community.
JICA also supports to improve midwife’s skill.
After that, we visited one of public hospitals in the distinct.
In Bangladesh, the law permits doctors to do part-time jobs in private clinic. They tend to work more in private clinic to earn their money. Therefore, there are no enough doctors in public hospitals.
JICA supports to buy surgical machine and to refit the public hospital. Those supports contribute to improve hospitals' performance in Narsingdi.
When we visited an operation room, a technician just repaired an autoclave, which was bought by JICA’s support. JICA's staff said that it is easy to give them new devices, but it is difficult to use them for a long time. This is because there is no good maintenance system. Support should not be a loss of their independence, so it is difficult.
The most important point in this project is to make good relationship among the community groups, hospitals, distinct, and central (see next page).
In community level, JICA supports to make a group to protect pregnant mother. In hospital level, it supports to improve hospital performance. Those community groups and hospitals collaborate to bring pregnant mother smoothly. In central level, JICA helps political decision making from learning of those model cases, like Narsingdi.
From studying ICDDR,B, I met many children, whose life could be helped. I wandered how prevent those children to become such a severe condition. When this project contributes to reduce preventable death, I think it is great thing.
I thank to JICA's staff and Dr.S for their help to my visiting to Narsingdi.
After back to Japan, I want to share these wonderful experiences to contribute more development for both Japan and Bangladesh.
I wish the project would succeed and develop more and more.
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