Autism spectrum disorder among 16- to 30-month-old children in Bangladesh: Observational cross-sectional study.

A nationwide survey was done in Bangladesh to assess autism spectrum disorder prevalence in 16- to 30-month-old children at urban-rural distribution and to determine the association with socioeconomic and demographic conditions. A three-stage cluster sampling method was used where districts from all divisions were selected in the first stage, census enumeration areas as blocks of households were selected in the second stage and households (within the blocks) were selected in the third stage. Thereby, it included 38,440 children from 37,982 households (71% rural, 29% urban) aged 16-30 months from 30 districts of eight divisions of Bangladesh.

Mobile phone support to sustain exclusive breastfeeding in the community after hospital delivery and counseling: a quasi-experimental study.

Background: Rapid increases in hospital and cesarean deliveries threaten an already falling exclusive breastfeeding rate (EBR) in Bangladesh. There is neither a sustained Baby-Friendly Hospital Initiative (BFHI) nor any community support for breastfeeding mothers. Our aim was to find out whether breastfeeding support after hospital delivery and subsequently by mobile phone at home is effective in improving EBR in infants under six-months of age.

Regional initiatives to address the challenges of tuberculosis in children: perspectives from the Asia-Pacific region.

Increasing attention is being given to the challenges of management and prevention of tuberculosis in children and adolescents. There have been a number of recent important milestones achieved at the global level to address this previously neglected disease. There is now a need to increase activities and build partnerships at the regional and national levels in order to address the wide policy-practice gaps for implementation, and to take the key steps outlined in the Roadmap for Child Tuberculosis published in 2013.

Controlling scabies in madrasahs (Islamic religious schools) in Bangladesh.

Objectives: To assess the effectiveness of a scabies control programme in reducing the prevalence of scabies in urban Bangladesh madrasahs, where the condition is extremely common.

Study Design: A controlled trial involving four intervention madrasahs (total students 2359) and four control madrasahs (total students 2465) in Dhaka Metropolitan Area.

Methods: A baseline scabies sample survey was carried out on 40 and 44 students of four intervention and four control madrasahs, respectively.

Intervention to increase detection of childhood tuberculosis in Bangladesh.

Background: Despite a well-functioning adult tuberculosis (TB) control programme, children with TB remain grossly under-detected in Bangladesh. It is conservatively estimated that annually around 21,000 children with TB go undetected, due to an almost exclusive focus on sputum smear-positive TB and the absence of training or guidelines in paediatric TB.

Objective: To double child TB detection by increasing general awareness and training of health care workers at microscopy centres supported by the Damien Foundation (DF) Bangladesh.