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This study examines women's attitude towards intimate partner violence among 331 Bangladeshi women in five selected disadvantaged areas of Dhaka city. This study used a shorter version of the Inventory of Beliefs about Wife Beating (IBWB) to measure women's attitude towards intimate partner violence. The results revealed that the mean score on the wife-beating scale of 15 items was 7.81 (SD=4.893). Significant amounts of the variance (42.9%) in women's attitude towards intimate partner violence can be attributed to respondent's education (B=−0.60, p<0.001), husband's education (B=−1.251, p<0.01), exposure to mass media (B=−1.251, p<0.01), respondent's current age (B=0.081, p<0.05), age at marriage (B=0.215, p<0.01), intimate partner violence victimization within the last 12 months (B=−1.533, p<0.001) and women receiving micro-credit (small-scale loan or financial assistance) (B= −2.214, p<0.001). The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of the findings.

The age at first birth is very low under existing rural sociocultural settings in Bangladesh. This study examined the socioeconomic and cultural determinants of age at first birth. The study subjects were married women aged 15 to 29 years in 2 rural areas that were identified through a multistage sampling technique. To collect the relevant information, a semistructured interviewer schedule was applied to the eligible women. This study found that 72.8% women gave first birth at <20 years of age with mean age at first birth 18.74 years. Simple linear regression model explained 30.9% of variance in age at first live birth. Among socioeconomic and cultural determinants, family pressure explained the most significant variance. It is really difficult to reduce fertility in complex sociocultural settings in rural Bangladesh. However, the findings of this study may provide an answer to increase the age at first birth and hence to reduce the high fertility among these group of women.

Objective: This study focused on the factors affecting the institutional delivery and delivery assisted by health professionals in urban slums. Materials and methods: A semi-structured questionnaire was developed to collect information from women aged 15-49 who had at least one birth. Totally 540 eligible women were interviewed. Results: The results showed that around 20% of women delivered at an institute while 32.8% were assisted by health professionals. Logistic regression showed that respondent's education, number of ANC received by women, receiving TT, male participation, autonomy, attitude towards maternal health care services and distance from home to clinic had significant impact on both institutional delivery and delivery assisted by health professionals whereas birth order of the last child and respondent's knowledge on maternal health care services had a significant effect only on institutional delivery. Conclusion: It might be concluded that in order to further increase the institutional delivery and delivery assisted by health professionals consideration should be given on the above-mentioned socio-economic and demographic factors.

Children's hygiene is very important for better health but there is a paucity of studies in this area. This questionnaire study examined the child care hygiene practices of mothers of young children. A total of 354 women from slum areas of Dhaka city, Bangladesh, who migrated from rural to urban areas were selected for this study. The mean score on hygiene practice was 6.21 of 10 items (SD = 2.113). Low (score = 3) and high hygiene practice (score = 7-10) were practiced by 12.4% and 45.8% of participants, respectively. Multivariate regression analysis indicated that independent variables explained 39.9% of variance in hygiene practices. Eight variables have significant effect participant's education (0.108; P < .05), time spent since marriage to first birth (0.030; P < .05), number of children (−0.105; P < .05), number of antenatal visits (0.319; P < .001 ), microcredit status (0.214; P < .001), breastfeeding (0.224; P < .001), husband's monthly income (0.146; P < .001 ), and household economic status (−0.0114; P < .05). The overall hygiene practice indicates the necessity of awareness building initiatives.

The study assessed the achievements in, critically reviewed the relevant issues of, and put forward recommendations for achieving the target of the Millennium Development Goal relating to mortality of children aged less than five years (under-five mortality) in Bangladesh within 2015. To materialize the study objectives, a thorough literature review was done. Mortality of under-five children and infants decreased respectively to 65 from 151 and to 52 from 94 per 1,000 livebirths during 1990-2006. The immunization coverage increased from 54% to 81.9% during the same period. The projection shows that Bangladesh will achieve targeted reduction in under-five mortality and infant mortality within the time limit, except immunization coverage. Neonatal mortality contributed to the majority of childhood deaths. Contribution of neonatal mortality to child mortality was the highest. There were remarkable differences in child mortality by sex, division, and residence. To progress further for achieving the target of MDG relating to child mortality, some issues, such as lower use of maternal healthcare services, hazardous environmental effects on childhood illness, high malnutrition among children, shorter duration of exclusive breastfeeding practices, various child injuries leading to death, low healthcare-use of children, probable future threat of financial shortage, and strategies lacking area-wise focus on child mortality, need to be considered. Without these, the achievement of MDG relating to child mortality may not be possible within 2015.