| The
Bangladesh Behaviour Change Communication Unit plays a role
in the success of lowering the country's fertility and achieving
some of its other population, health and development goals.
Social norms in Bangladesh have resulted in a strong
preference for boys. The country's population programme
uses information techniques to bring about a more balanced
view of the composition of families. (Photograph courtesy
of Richard M. Henshaw)
The continued processing and dissemination
of relevant population information has proven essential
not only for sustaining gains made under the National Family
Planning Programme in slowing the population growth rate
but also for making possible further advances towards achieving
replacement level fertility by the year 2005 while significantly
lowering maternal and child mortality rates, all of which
are called for by the Bali Declaration on Population and
Sustainable Development and the Programme of Action of the
International Conference on Population and Development.
The development of population information in Bangladesh
began with the launching in July 1980 of a project entitled
"The Population lnformation Service"; technical
assistance for the project was provided by ESCAP and financial
support by UNFPA. This project, which was part of a larger
one called "Strengthening of the IEM (information,
Education and Motivation) Unit of the Directorate of Family
Planning", was responsible for planning, designing,
implementing, monitoring and evaluating the communication
interventions for the National Family Planning Programme.
Under this project, a documentation centre was established
to provide the country with an institutional framework for
population information activities. The Population Information
Service/Centre comprised three sections: a reference and
documentation section for the identification, collection,
documentation, storage and retrieval of information; an
information research section for conducting research, monitoring,
evaluating and developing programmes; and an information
dissemination section for the production and dissemination
of information and the organization of the information network.
It was in 1985 that the Centre was integrated with the
larger Unit, which serves as the national focal point for
Bangladesh in Asia-Pacific POPIN. The Centre coordinates
population information services and activities nationally.
It is the focal point also of the in-country POPIN.
The Centre functions under the Director of the BCC Unit;
it has a collection of more than 6,000 books and journals,
which are available to an array of users, including personnel
from the Directorate of Family Planning.
Bangladesh is one of the most densely populated
countries in the world; hence, population issues are of
primary importance in the formulation and implementation
of development policies and programmes. (Photograph courtesy
of Richard M. Henshaw)
Among the outreach services of the Centre is the publication
of Porikroma, a bi-monthly Bengali-language newsletter,
which provides coverage of national population and family
planning activities and international events. It has a circulation
of 12,000 copies per issue; the main target audiences include
programme managers, policy makers, service providers, religious
leaders, population professionals, journalists, NGOs and
various government ministries. Another of its publications
is the Population Bulletin, an English-language quarterly
covering national population and family planning news and
maternal and child health activities. It is sent to other
members of the Asia-Pacific POPIN network, embassies and
donor agencies, and development partners. In addition, six
leading national newspapers are scanned and pertinent news
articles are clipped for the information of national programme
managers and other users. The Centre also produces guides
for family planning field workers, flip charts, booklets
and folders for service providers.
BCC activities include the holding of workshops for population
correspondents as well as journalists and editors of leading
national newspapers. Briefing journalists about population
and related issues enables the government to enlist their
support in more widely disseminating population messages
through the mass media.
The Centre also plans to create a computerized database
with information collected from population and family planning
related literature. This will make the work of the Centre
more efficient with regard to analysing, processing and
disseminating population data and information to target
audiences.
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