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Formal vs Informal : Health Governance in Urban Slums in Dhaka City, Bangladesh

Bachera Aktar (bachera.aktar@bracu.ac.bd), BRAC James P Grant School of Public Health, BRAC University, Dhaka, Bangladesh; Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, Liverpool, UK

Background

One-third of the population of Dhaka city, the capital of Bangladesh, live in slums (BBS, 2015) which are often left out of urban planning and development (Banks, 2011).

There is a lack of government stewardship in urban slums because of Bangladesh’s complex urban health systems.

Unrecognized by the government and in policy frameworks limits access to basic facilities and healthcare services (Banks, 2011).

  • The weak health governance leads to the emergence of hybrid governance systems in urban slums (Hackenbroch & Hossain, 2012; Hossain, 2013).
  • Health systems actors depend on local informal governance actors to provide health services in urban slums in Dhaka city (Hossain, 2013).
  • This research aims to study the hybrid governance arrangements in urban slums in Dhaka city and how these influence the health and wellbeing of the residents.
  • This is the first phase of a PhD research that is embedded in a large research project named ARISE.

Formal vs Informal : Health Governance in Urban Slums in Dhaka City, Bangladesh