Twenty Years of Field Worker Visits by FP Workers in Bangladesh: Do We Really Need Them?

Nashid Kamal, Independent University, Bangladesh
Masuda Mohsena, Ibrahim Medical College

In Bangladesh the National Family Planning Programme introduced female workers in 1978 to provide doorstep services. A total of 24,000 female workers continued this service until 1998, when new policies were enacted, static clinics were set up and home visits were drastically curtailed. This analysis uses the national level data from the BDHS 2004 to investigate the effect of the new policies and evaluate the importance of female field workers after their visits were reduced. Results show that for various methods of modern contraception, the home visits still remain a strong predictor of use of the method, even when other related covariates are controlled. We also find that in the newly defined administrative regions, Barisal and Sylhet, the performance in contraceptive use is significantly poor. This indicates that Bangladeshi women of reproductive age still benefit from doorstep services, and complete withdrawal of these services should be delayed.