NGO Service Delivery Program

The NGO Service Delivery Program or NSDP came into being in July 2002, with the aim of making essential health services more readily available to the teeming millions of Bangladesh, with particular focus on marginalized groups. This has been a conspicuously successful collaborative enterprise of eight partners. The communities which a decade ago were indifferent to health issues, are beginning to show greater interest in them and their members are turning up in ever increasing numbers to NSDP's health service delivery centers - the Smiling Sun Clinics. This difficult task has been accomplished in large part by NSDP, with Behavior Change Communication (BCC) support from BCCP.

A number of action-programs undertaken this year generated a huge change in the health behavior of the people of Bangladesh. These included the Health Benefit Card which provides the card holder or members of his/her family with free health counseling and certain free medicines; the BCC and Marketing Toolkit which raises the standard of existing and newly introduced health services, ensuring greater use of these services by the poor; the thirty- minute PLTM Counseling Video which is used to train a counselor who will know how best to satisfy a customer through counseling and at the same time play an important role in extending the clinic's area of activities; a path-breaking NSDP initiative for creating health awareness at the local level through a Music Video Read more

 

Adolescent Reproductive Health Program

Drawing upon years of research into meaningful ways of reaching essential health messages to the young in the remotest corners of Bangladesh, BCCP executed a communication program that induced the boys and girls in the target age-group to be decidedly more conscious of the problems of adolescence - the tensions and worries that accompany the onset of puberty, the risks regarding premature motherhood, the dangers of unprotected sexual encounters and of course the deadly enemy, HIV and AIDS. In the fourth year of the program, BCCP carried out several activities to consolidate the approaches, and have them incorporated in the programs of other NGOs in order to attain sustainability of the intervention.  The activities included:

Organizing an Orientation Program on Adolescent Reproductive Health (ARH) Communication Materials

The orientation program with the title "Comic Books and Communication Materials on Adolescent Reproductive Health" took place at Hotel Abakash on 9 October, 2006 and the speakers on the occasion included, among others, Professor Mostafa Kamal, Principal, Dhaka Public College and Mr. Edson E. Whitney, Associate Director of JHU/CCP. The orientation program intended, on the one hand, to give the participants an idea about the nature of the activities meant to improve adolescent reproductive health and, on the other, have their views on how best they can contribute to these activities from their respective positions. Read more

Initiative to Combat Bird Flu

Bird Flu has recently made its catastrophic appearance in several countries in both the Eastern and Western Hemispheres, alarming people and governments alike.

In Bangladesh it was initially reported in March 2007. The only sensible way to fight Bird Flu is to adopt preventive measures and to raise public awareness to make these measures effective.  BCCP has undertaken different programs and developed a number of communication tools as part of its public awareness raising drive to counter a possible Bird Flu epidemic in Bangladesh and its possible consequences. The program includes development of BCC materials, organizing training for government and NGO workers dealing  with poultry farmers and poultry-sellers, market chain research, KAP (Knowledge, Attitude and Practice) study, etc. The materials developed are posters, brochures and flipcharts on bio-security, learning materials for children on Bird Flu and a toolkit on preventive measures and ways to ensure bio-security at both domestic and farming levels. With the aim of reaching basic knowledge of bio-security management to every household in Bangladesh, BCCP has also developed a one-day training curriculum for government and NGO workers dealing with poultry farmers and poultry-sellers. Read more