Bringing the community together to raise family planning awareness

SNV Bangladesh organised a daylong Health & Family Planning Awareness Fair for garment workers in Gazipur, on the outskirts of the capital Dhaka, on 29 June 2018. The fair was held to increase awareness of family planning in the low-income settlements of garments workers, and provide basic family planning consultation services through a Health Camp.

The Health & Family Planning Awareness Fair was the first event of a three-week Community Awareness Campaign. Over the next two weeks, similar awareness events and health camps will be organised in two other project locations inhabited mostly by factory workers and their families.

Held at the premises of a local school, the event comprised of cultural events, stage drama, folk song performance and video display to inform and educate the community people, especially the garment workers about family planning and maternal health. Supported by local Al-Hera Hospital, the health camp provided health services including family planning to more than 100 mothers and other community residents.

The awareness campaign and health camp is a part of the ‘Facilitating access to health for factory workers’ project funded by the Sphere Association. The project’s mandate is to create a comprehensive and easily accessible healthcare system for garment workers in five factories in Gazipur and Savar region. More than 10,000 workers have already been brought under a health insurance scheme under the project.

Bangladesh is the world’s second-largest garment exporter with over 4.2 million workers in the sector. Women in low-income settlements of garments workers continue to live at risk of unintended pregnancies and although some of them know the physical and socioeconomic values of using family planning, many still fail to use contraception or other family planning methods for lack of awareness.