Cholera, an acute waterborne diarrheal disease, remains a major global health challenge. Despite being curable and preventable, it can be fatal if left untreated, especially for children. Bangladesh, a cholera-endemic country with a high disease burden, experiences two peaks annually, during the dry pre-monsoon spring and the wet post-monsoon fall seasons.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAs the world's longest running pandemic, cholera poses a substantial public health burden in Bangladesh, where human vulnerability intersects with climatic variability. Barriers to safe water and sanitation place the health of millions of Bangladeshis in jeopardy - especially those who have highly constrained choices in preventing and responding to cholera. In this paper we investigate demand for cholera prevention among residents in the Mirpur and Karail slum areas of urban Dhaka.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThalassemias are emerging as a global public health concern. Due to remarkable success in the reduction of childhood mortality by controlling infectious diseases in developing countries, thalassemias are likely to be a major public health concern in the coming decades in South Asia. Despite the fact that Bangladesh lies in the world's thalassemia belt, the information on different aspects (epidemiology, clinical course, mortality, complications and treatment outcomes) of thalassemias is lacking.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFArsenic contamination of groundwater in Bangladesh is a widespread public health hazard. Water sources without high arsenic levels are scarce, affecting people's availability for work and other activities when they have to seek safe water to drink. While children are particularly susceptible to chronic arsenic exposure, limited information and heavy constraints on resources may preclude people in developing countries from taking protective actions.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFFront Public Health
July 2014
The focus of this paper is to present an empirical model of factors affecting child health by observing actions households take to avoid exposure to arsenic in drinking water. Millions of Bangladeshis face multiple health hazards from high levels of arsenic in drinking water. Safe water sources are either expensive or difficult to access, affecting people's individuals' time available for work and ultimately affecting the health of household members.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe focus of this research is to present a theoretical model of averting actions that households take to avoid exposure to Yersinia enterocolitica in contaminated food. The cost of illness approach only takes into account the value of a cure, while the averting behavior approach can estimate the value of preventing the illness. The household, rather than the individual, is the unit of analysis in this model, where one household member is primarily responsible for procuring uncontaminated food for their family.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Health Popul Nutr
September 2006
Widespread contamination of arsenic in Bangladesh has been jeopardizing the health of millions of people. Residents of Matlab, Bangladesh, are among the millions at risk. Using bivariate models in the analysis of survey data, knowledge of health risks and avoidance of arsenic exposure in response to widespread contamination of arsenic for residents of Matlab were estimated.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF