Current Conditions: Population & Health

Dramatic Improvements in Health

Twenty years ago, many experts claimed the nation's conservative culture and low standard of living would be insurmountable obstacles to family planning and child survival programs in Bangladesh. However, over the past three decades health indicators have improved dramatically.

In Bangladesh contraceptive use among currently married couples increased from 8% in the mid 1970’s to 56% in 2007. This resulted in a significant decline in fertility from 6.3 to 2.7 children per woman over the same period. However, recent findings from the 2007 Bangladesh Demographic and Health Survey show that contraceptive use rate has not improved in the past 3 years. Bangladesh’s goal to reach a fertility level of 2 children per woman or below will require contraceptive use to increase substantially over the current use rate.

There has been a significant increase in use of antenatal care among pregnant women, from 49%in 2004 to 52% 2007.4. Despite the rise in antenatal care, only one in five women receive the recommended four or more antenatal visits during her pregnancy. Less than one in five deliveries are assisted by a trained birth attendant. has a consequence-35 women are dying each day in giving child birth.

Over the last three decades, mortality rates of children under the age of five have declined significantly. Their risk of dying has fallen from 250 to 65 deaths per 1000 live births. Similar sharp decline has occurred in infant deaths due to the success of a number of child health programs like increasing vaccination coverage and improving management and treatment of diarrhea and acute respiratory infections.  Most deaths among children under five years of age, occurs now in the first month of life.  Reducing neonatal mortality has become an emerging challenge for Bangladesh.