PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Md Golam Rasul
AU  - Mahamudul Hasan
AU  - Daluwar Hossain
AU  - Fariha Haseen
AU  - Subhasish Das
AU  - Tahmeed Ahmed
TI  - Qualitative assessment of programmatic constraints in delivery of effective interventions for improving maternal nutrition in Bangladesh
AID  - 10.1136/bmjnph-2021-000395
DP  - 2023 Feb 15
TA  - BMJ Nutrition, Prevention & Health
PG  - e000395
4099  - http://nutrition.bmj.com/content/early/2023/03/07/bmjnph-2021-000395.short
4100  - http://nutrition.bmj.com/content/early/2023/03/07/bmjnph-2021-000395.full
AB  - Introduction Maternal undernutrition is highly prevalent in most of the developing countries. Prevalence of both extremes of maternal malnutrition (undernutrition and overweight/obesity) are common in those countries. For Bangladesh, the scenario is not different. The Government of Bangladesh recognises maternal nutrition as a public health priority and addresses the issue in its policies and programmes. We identified and analysed the existing maternal nutrition programmes and determined the bottlenecks in implementing the programmes in Bangladesh using qualitative approach.Methods We followed a qualitative research approach and conducted 25 key informant interviews with the programme managers and policymakers, 10 in-depth interviews with the service providers and six focus group discussions with the pregnant women to identify the constraints of programme implementation. We analysed data using thematic and inductive approaches of qualitative research methods.Results We have found that successful implementation of maternal nutrition intervention was being hampered by both the demand and supply side issues. On the demand side, major constraints were financial inability of the families to avail maternal nutrition-related services, ignorance of the family members and cultural barriers of using maternal nutrition-related services. Lack of priority and heavy workload of the service providers, lack of human resources, poor monitoring system, lack of medicine to supply and incoordination have been identified as major supply-side constraints in providing maternal nutrition-related interventions in Bangladesh.Conclusion Both supply side and demand side issues are responsible for the existing bottlenecks in implementing maternal nutrition-related programmes in Bangladesh. Findings of this study will help the policymakers to learn about the programmatic constraints regarding maternal nutrition services in Bangladesh.Data are available upon reasonable request.