Health seeking behaviour of childless women in Bangladesh: An ethnographic exploration for the special issue on: Loss in child bearing

Papreen Nahar

Social Science & Medicine, 2010, vol. 71, issue 10, 1780-1787

Abstract: This paper deals with the health seeking behaviour of childless rural poor and urban middle class women in Bangladesh. Data for this study were collected from a northern district of Bangladesh named Mymensing, using various qualitative methods including life histories, in-depth interviews, and key-informant interviews The study shows that social class and the geographical location of the childless women determine their health seeking behaviour. Local healers in the informal sector were found to be the most popular health service option among the rural childless women. The factors for utilising them included low costs, the gender of the provider (with same-sex providers being preferred), having a shared explanatory model with the healers, and easy availability. Unlike their rural counterparts, urban childless women predominantly seek expensive Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ART) treatment which is available only in the formal sector, in private services. However, despite their affiliation with modern treatment, urban childless women still believe, like their rural counterparts, that the remedy for childlessness ultimately depends on God. As a result, in addition to biomedical treatment, many return to or simultaneously pursue various traditional, spiritual or folk treatments. It was found in this study that in Bangladesh, where fertility control is the main focus of health policy, childless women are excluded from mainstream discussions on women's health. Consequently the childless women have to suffer in various ways as a result of their health seeking behaviour.

Keywords: Bangladesh; South; East; Asia; Childlessness; Infertility; Health; seeking; Women's; health; Health-policy; Reproductive; health (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277-9536(10)00573-3
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:socmed:v:71:y:2010:i:10:p:1780-1787

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/supportfaq.cws_home/regional
http://www.elsevier. ... _01_ooc_1&version=01

Access Statistics for this article

Social Science & Medicine is currently edited by Ichiro (I.) Kawachi and S.V. (S.V.) Subramanian

More articles in Social Science & Medicine from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().