Women have played a key role in bringing about changes in improving health in Bangladesh. Not only through the “massive and unprecedented deployment of diverse cadres of mostly female front-line health workers reaching every household” but in women who were empowered to take control of their own health and reproduction. “Pro-poor and pro-women” programmes, such as education and micro-finance, have reduced inequalities. Despite low spending on health, a weak health system and widespread poverty, the country has achieved great strides in life expectancy, vaccination rates, TB control and a child’s chances of surviving past the age of five, according to a series of focus papers published in The Lancet. <...

Bangladesh has had 40 years of exceptional progress in health, with infant mortality down, life expectancy up and good disease control, all despite being one of the world’s poorest countries, researchers said on Thursday. Most often in the news for its poverty or natural or manmade disasters, such as a factory fire that killed 1,129 people in April, Bangladesh was described in studies published on Thursday as a “remarkable success story” and one of the “great mysteries of global health”. “Over the past 40 years, Bangladesh has outperformed its Asian neighbours, convincingly defying the expert view that reducing poverty and increasing health resources are the key drivers of better population health,” said Professor Mushtaque Chowdhury from Dhaka’s BRACUniversity, who co-led a serie...