Like other years ARK Foundation arranged its General Annual Meeting in Cox’s Bazar on January 26, 2017. Executive Director of ARK, Dr. Rumana Huque, chaired the meeting. All ARK employees joined the meeting, had discussion and presented on their activities, challenges and recommendation for the organization. Some of the policies are reviewed and some new instructions are given to all. Latest publications were presented before the team. Researchers presented on different ongoing projects. Upcoming projects and publication plan were discussed with the team. The Executive Director congratulated all for a successful year and expressed her hope to continue the progress with more success in the upcoming days.

A project review meeting on our TB-Tobacco Project was held at the Conference room of National Tuberculosis Program office in 10th of this month. ARK Team presented their materials developed for the project to the Govt. team.

A training of Field Investigators by Dr. Md. Abul Bashar Sarker from Health Economics Unit of Ministry of Health & Family Welfare, Bangladesh has been conducted today at ARK Foundation under our study on Non-Communicable Disease (NCD).

ARK Foundation organized a meeting at Islamic Foundation Library with Religious Leaders of the Govt. of Bangladesh (GoB). The aim was to explore and reach consensus for working with Public Health Issues that can be intervened through religious means.
Our Guests were:

Zakir Ahmed, Joint Secretary, Ministry of Religious Affairs, GoB
Dr. Khizir Hayat Khan, Director, Dept. of Research, Islamic Foundation
Maulana Abdur Rob Al Baghdadi, Deputy Director, Imam Training Academy
Md. Shafiqur Rahman Talukder, Librarian, Islamic Foundation Library
and Maulana Abdus Sobhan Al Azhary, Fellow, Al Azhar University

We feel joyous and proud to have Dr. Kamran Siddiqi among us, Professor of University of York and Project Investigator of our new project named MCLASS -II (Muslim Communities Learning About Second Hand Smoking).
He and the team had a meeting on Intervention strategies which will be followed by several other upcoming meetings and workshops with religious leaders, community heads, key persons in the Religion ministry and community members in the project area.

On 24^th March, it will be World TB Day. Under the National TB Programme (NTP), we can all make use of free TB diagnosis and treatment. But uptake to this free service is surprisingly slow. Why is this?

My personal view is that there are still many myths that we have to overcome, the biggest one being that TB cannot be cured. This is simply not true: TB is 100% curable, and each and every one of us can have free treatment if we go to any of the NTP clinics for diagnosis and treatment.

If you work in a factory that is part of the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA), then their doctor or paramedic can test you for free, without you losing your pay or having to stop work for treatment. However, not all factories are part of BGMEA, and we at ARK Foundation know the challenges of trying to persuade employers to invest in diagnosis and treatment for their staff.

When we conducted research, with the help of the BGMEA factories, we found that factory managers were reluctant to allow workers to visit TB diagnosis centres during working hours, and also reluctant to allow their staff to continue working once they were diagnosed with TB. In some factories, even the workers were uncomfortable accepting their colleagues back into the workplace.

We also found that some medical staff based in the factories thought that keeping up-to-date treatment records was time-consuming, and factories without medical facilities struggled to organise the referral mechanism that we were proposing, and struggled to maintain records.

All these challenges still exist, and do not help the cause of fighting TB. What did we do to tackle these challenges? We held orientation and educational activities for a large number of workers to challenge the stigma and myths surrounding TB. Most importantly, we gave them information on how they can get free diagnosis and treatment, and we persuaded factory managers that it was in their best interests (and ultimately more profitable) if they didn’t sack workers who were diagnosed with TB, but instead let them continue treatment while working for them.

Our project had a 100% success rate; everyone who worked in the BGMEA factories who was diagnosed with TB went on to complete their treatment and is 100% cured.

So what can we take away from this? My view is that providing workplace TB control depends on the management’s good understanding of what it takes to control TB in the workplace. Management also need to commit to allowing workers diagnosed with TB to continue to work in their factories and visit diagnosis centres during working hours.

Our experience of working with BGMEA factories can easily be replicated in other business sectors. However, national policies and funds should be mobilised to provide encouragement and support. Armed with this evidence, the NTP is in a strong position to initiate relationships with trade associations to help the workers and managers of Bangladesh control TB.

Dhaka, November 17: Awareness, change in food habit and lifestyle, and early diagnosis and treatment can save many people affected by non-communicable diseases (NCDs) from premature death.

Health experts made the observation at a national workshop on ‘Strengthening, Monitoring, Control System for NCDs at Various Levels of Health Delivery Systems’ held at Brac Centre in Dhaka on Tuesday (Nov 17).

They said regular exercise, decrease in consumption of salt, sugar and high-cholesterol foods and pursuit of a healthy lifestyle can control NCDs like diabetes, hypertension, cancer and kidney diseases and cut NCD-resultant premature death rates.

On October 2015, Non Communicable Diseases Control Programme of Directorate General of Health Services organized a seminar in collaboration with ARK Foundation to discuss challenges in non-communicable diseases control. Representatives from government and non-government organizations participated in the seminar. Professor Dr. Deen Mohd. Noorul Huq, Director General of Health Services was the Chief Guest. Professor M. A. Faiz presented the key note paper. Professor Abul Kalam Azad, ADG and Line Director-MIS chaired one of the sessions.  Representatives from BRAC, ICDDR,B, CIPRB , WHO and ARK Foundation were the key participants among non-government organizations.

The lively discussion of key decision makers, health practitioners, researchers and activists helped identify major challenges of non-communicable diseases control in Bangladesh context. Following challenges were identified:

1. Lack of life style education and behavioral change communications is the major obstacle in preventing NCDs.
2. Poor surveillance system failing to direct the decision makers to plan for more effective service delivery.
3. Research based findings are not considered in planning and new initiatives.
4. Graduate and Post-graduate curriculums are not
   upda
   ted to face new challenges.
5. Patients are not properly referred for better treatment.

Professor Rumana Huque, Executive Director, ARK Foundation thanked the organizers, guests and general participants for their contributions in identifying the challenges and urged for more effective initiatives to improve lives of underprivileged patients with NCDs.