Compared to Southeast Asia, Dhaka city represents an apparent anomaly: a rapidly growing metropolis with relatively little change in early marriage practices, with 51 percent of 15-19 year-old females in 2000 already married. The rapid influx of rural poor families to Dhaka has led to a rapid...

Despite initiatives and interventions undertaken at national and international levels, maternal health is still neglected in Bangladesh, and the maternal mortality ratio remains one of the highest in the world. In order to improve rural women's access to maternity care, in 1996 the Bangladesh...