Search

Receiving adequate, timely and effective medical care at the tertiary level hospitals can be a challenge because of the difficulty to reach these hospitals. Many of these facilities are located in central or certain geographic areas. This study describes the geographic distribution of tertiary care hospitals in Bangladesh and assesses their accessibility. Several data sources including the Directorate General of Health Services, National Population Census and Google Maps were used. Geographic inaccessibility ranking was calculated by a method that used data on population and area of the district, travel time and distance to the hospital. Among 35 hospitals, 16 are situated in Dhaka district comprising 10,424 beds, which is almost 41% of the total tertiary care beds. Among the 64 total districts, 46 do not have any such hospital. Around 6.4 million people need to travel more than 3 hours and another 25.4 million need between 2 and 3 hours to reach tertiary care hospitals. Geographic inaccessibility score was found to be high for 5 districts, moderate for 5 districts and low for 19 districts. High centrality of location and skewed distribution of these hospitals may have created health inequity and disparity for a large population segment in Bangladesh. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

BACKGROUND: Empowering workers through operational safety committees and having an effective safety reporting mechanism improves occupational health and safety. The Western large retailers mostly from Europe formed the Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh (Accord) in 2013 to advance occupational health and safety in the Bangladesh garment industry and one of its missions was to empower the workers. OBJECTIVE: The objective of this study was to investigate the impact of Accord's programs on improving safety and quality of the working environment in the garment sector. METHOD: All reports of Accord published and made available for the public were accessed and analyzed. Data were gathered and presented on 1) number of Safety Committees formed 2) Safety Training Programs conducted and 3) Safety and Health Complaints received. RESULTS: By 2021, a total of 1581 factories and 1.8 million workers were covered by Accord. By May, 2021, Accord formed Safety Committees and completed training sessions on these in 1022 factories (65% of the target). By 2020, the average number of total complaints received per factory was around two and the number of occupational health and safety (OSH) complaints -which was deemed to be dealt directly by Accord- was less than one per factory. The numbers of OSH complaints were less than two per 1000 workers and non-OSH complaints made up almost one third (25-35%) of all complaints during 2016 to 2019; however, in 2020 and 2021, non-OSH complaints constituted half (50%) of all complaints. CONCLUSION: Accord's worker empowerment mission could not form Safety Committees or deliver training sessions in all its factories and the number and relevance of complaints received appeared to be low given the number of factories and workers it covered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: After a series of garment factory disasters that had taken place in Bangladesh, the Alliance for Bangladesh Worker Safety (Alliance) was formed by 29 large North American retail companies to improve worker safety in Bangladesh‐ the second largest ready‐made garments producing country in the world. Aims: This report focuses on Alliance's Worker Empowerment initiative—Worker Helpline and examines the types, contents and volume of calls received by it. Methods: All published reports of Alliance that are available online were retrieved. Data from each quarter (Q) in 2017, 2018, and 2019 were extracted in terms of (1) Total calls (2) Substantive calls, and (3) Safety calls (Urgent and Non‐urgent). Results: By 2019, Q3 Helpline covered 1.5 million workers in 1091 factories. In Q1 2017, there was 1 call made per 73 workers and 20 calls made per a factory whereas in Q3 2019 there was 1 call per 171 workers and 8 calls coming from a factory. In terms of safety calls, there was 0.59 calls/factory in Q1 2017 but went down to 0.17 calls/factory in Q3 2019. Helpline in 2019 Q3 received 1283 substantive calls; of that 189 were safety calls which included 18 urgent and 171 non‐urgent calls. In Q1 of 2017, 32% factories did not make any calls and in Q3 2019, 62% of factories did not make any calls at all. Conclusions: The worker empowerment initiative‐ Helpline‐in Bangladesh initiated by the North American companies remained underutilized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]