Members’ Publication

Limited people of Bangladesh use sanitary latrine. Even there are some places in Bangladesh where people don’t use any type of latrine. The latrines, they use, should not be termed as latrine. We first started our work after getting little insight about Participatory Action Research. Then, by consulting with experts, we got clear concept about it. We collected primary data indeed and we did not go through any schematic format to collect that data. Our objectives were: assessing the knowledge, attitude and behaviors of villagers towards the advantages and disadvantages of sanitary latrine and towards the improved sanitation; building awareness of the villagers towards use of sanitary latrine and promoting them to increase access of sanitary latrine; using the students as volunteers to aware village people for using improved sanitation; and making a plan of actions on improved sanitation. Swalpo Shingjuri is a Char Land area of Manikganj District. As the village is a flood prone area, so, people there build houses by heightening the earth surface with soil. The quality of soil is sandy. Total population of the village is 317, where, educated people are 58% and total employee people are 185. The village women use cow dung for cooking burner. Total number of tube-well at the village is 29. The social status of the women in the village could be identified by simple words, “The speech of women should not be considered”. Villagers think, only use of Ring-Slab-type concrete latrines means sanitation. They don’t know that other matters of sanitation like nail cutting, taking bath in clean water, keeping houses neat and clean etc. are parts of sanitation. They think those parts are also necessary. But they don’t know these are within the public or private definition of sanitation. 80% of the people of Swalpo Singjuri village don’t use sanitary latrine. Although they treat their pond water as clean, but, it was observed that 30-40 people take bath at a time in that single pond and many villagers clean their domestic animals in that pond. They don’t bother different practices related to sanitation. Village women throw their napkins in the bushes behind their houses, which is not healthy practice. Later the villagers came to a result after analyzing the advantages and disadvantages of different types of latrines. They showed some cheap latrine options, like pit, slab-pit etc., which can be made within their own available resources. But they did not come to in any active initiatives. Thereafter, the people, who owned sanitary latrines, became proactive. They urged the people, who did not use sanitary latrine, to take fast initiatives; they even warned them that they would take judicial action. Then, the problems of people, who did not have sanitary latrine, were discussed again. They noticed that they cannot build those types of cheap latrines due to the soil quality of their locality. As the soil is sandy, so, the wall of the pit doesn’t sustain. Then, when they looked for our help, we showed them a manual of Department of Public Health Engineering. They choose two methods from the manual. The two methods need bamboo to build sanitary latrine. Finally, in result, 10 people built sanitary latrine. The villagers announced a plan to make sure 100% use of sanitary latrines in their village and to ensure sustainable sanitation conditions within that seasonal period. Different errors and malpractices were identified in case of Government’s baseline survey and latrine distribution program. The major key finding is, many people are discouraged from using sanitary latrine as few people get those latrines in free of charge.

ABSTRACT To build a proper living environment along with safe health provision, it is very important to fabricate the health facilities that are essential for standard living of human being. For rural area in Bangladesh it is the most important challenge issue today. The rural areas in Bangladesh have unreliable, irregular, or invariably non-existent, health facilities today. The study’s mainly based on primary data. The objectives of this study are to understand health awareness condition of the rural people. For the study purpose, primary data were collected mainly through household questionnaire survey. And secondary data were collected from different Government and Non Governmental organization from various healths’ related published and unpublished materials. Ratnopour situated in Barisal district is selected as the study area. This study have identified that seventeen percentage marriage of female are early marriage. Almost seventy parentage female and child have superstition and do not aware abut health improvement related issues. According to the findings of study provides some recommendations have to develop an easy and effective mechanism like Village Development Society for improvement of health awareness among the rural people to implement the rules and policies appropriately in an integrated manner in collaboration with Government, private sector and local people.

The research paper titled `Endemic Gloomy Destination – the ruinous and fragile fortune of the denizen of Char land in Bangladesh’ mainly focuses to explore the intensity, pattern and frequency of violence in char lands of Bangladesh. Geographical pattern, seasonal pattern and seasons are also associated to encourage char land violence. Here efforts have been done to search the issues, violence and interlink between these that accelerate crimes and violence in char lands. Data and information have collected mainly from secondary sources. On this occasion two daily national newspapers have used as the principal source. All news on Char crimes and violence published the Daily Ittefaq and the Daily Sangbad from 1991 to 2003 has collected as the base of this research. Other required data and information on rivers and char lands of Bangladesh have collected from various relevant publications. Some primary data were collected for cross-checking the secondary news by visiting char lands of four districts.