Public engagement is generally defined as “a two-way process, involving interaction and listening, with the goal of generating mutual benefit”. Through public engagement initiatives, two-way communication offers an effective way of designing health policies and setting priorities. Public engagement with local communities helps scientists and researchers to optimize the relevance of their research, and can
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Access to facility-based obstetric care could lower maternal death
Every day about 800 mothers die globally from complications at childbirth, mostly in low and middle-income countries. These deaths could be readily prevented by improving access to professional obstetric care. A recent paper by icddr,b researchers shows that increased travel time is a major disincentive for seeking facility-based obstetric care among the urban poor in
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Overcoming structural barriers to clean drinking water: highlights of ongoing work at icddr,b
In the nineteenth century, cholera epidemics ravaged Victorian London. The medical orthodoxy of the time mistakenly believed that cholera was spread by “miasma” – foul-smelling vapours that seemed to collect around the houses and latrines of the poor. Cholera was often presented as a moral consequence of the poor sanitary habits of the lower classes.
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Policy discussion on Urban Primary Healthcare
In July, a Policy Breakfast to discuss Urban Primary Healthcare was organised by the EU-supported SHARE (Strengthening Health, Applying Research Evidence) project at icddr,b, in collaboration with the Institute of Informatics and Development, in order to promote evidence-informed debate on urban health and primary health care. Dr Alayne Adams, Senior Social Scientist at icddr,b and
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Closing the gap on vaccine efficacy in the ‘global south’
Vaccines and antibiotics occupy a privileged position in the history of medicine. They are humanity’s “magic bullets” — categories of intervention so effective and easy to deliver that they have the capacity to single-handedly eradicate entire diseases from human history. But just as the heady utopia of an antibiotic age has given way to the
