BRAC opens second char health centre in Sirajganj

Families living on the shifting sandbars of the Jamuna River can now access safe deliveries and essential healthcare, as BRAC has expanded its Char Health Initiative with support from the Philips Foundation.

A second Char Health Centre has been launched in Ghorjan, a remote union in Sirajganj, following strong results from the first facility in Char Narayanpur, Kurigram, earlier this year.

The Kurigram centre demonstrated the effectiveness of the model within its first six months. Trained midwives safely conducted 20 normal deliveries, provided outpatient consultations to nearly 500 patients, and completed more than 400 ultrasound scans — for many women, their first ever. Early identification of high-risk pregnancies led to timely referrals to district hospitals, preventing life-threatening emergencies.

Chars — riverine islands that appear and erode with monsoon floods — are among the most challenging geographies for healthcare delivery. Roads vanish overnight and dry land often turns into water within a season. In Ghorjan, one of the most underserved char communities in Bangladesh, maternal and newborn mortality rates remain significantly higher than national averages. Home deliveries are widespread because there has simply been nowhere else to go, and many deaths go unreported.

The new centre will operate 24 hours a day, offering skilled delivery care, pregnancy check-ups, ultrasound and diagnostic services, immunisation, and telemedicine consultations. Midwives will manage normal deliveries and detect complications that require hospital care. Community health workers will visit households across the chars to connect expectant mothers to the facility, while a referral network links patients to mainland hospitals to reduce the fatal delays long associated with emergencies in these areas.

Wishing success for the Sirajganj centre, Eddine Sarroukh, Head of Philips Foundation, said: "What is remarkable about this initiative is how it turns one of Bangladesh's most challenging geographies into a testing ground for equity. These communities represent the last mile — isolated, flood-prone, and often invisible to the formal health system. Yet BRAC's model shows that when local knowledge and innovation come together, even the most fragile environments can host quality healthcare."

Dr Imran Ahmed Chowdhury, Head of Health System Transformation and Innovation at BRAC, said: "Unless investment reaches the last mile, the equity gap in Bangladesh's health system will persist. Our experience in Kurigram shows that with the right design, the barriers of geography can be overcome. With Sirajganj, we are taking the next step to bring the model to the unreached communities of the char."

Sirajganj Civil Surgeon Dr Md Nurul Amin attended the inauguration and noted the absence of delivery services in the locality. He welcomed the collaboration and expressed hope that the new centre would strengthen links between BRAC programmes and government health facilities.

The expansion is part of BRAC's wider Char Health Initiative under the CHARMS project, supported by the Philips Foundation, designed to demonstrate that health equity is achievable in disaster-prone, climate-vulnerable settings. Evidence from Kurigram and Sirajganj aims to inform government policy and extend services to other hard-to-reach regions, including haor basins and coastal belts.

If the model continues to deliver strong results, it could offer a blueprint for bringing essential healthcare to the millions of people living in landscapes that conventional health systems have long struggled to reach.