Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University (BSMMU) is a graduate medical university in Bangladesh. It was established in 1965 and was originally known as Pakistan General Hospital, or colloquially as PG Hospital. The university offers postgraduate degrees only, not offering undergraduate medical or dental degrees..
BACKGROUND:This study aimed to investigate obstetricians' knowledge, attitudes, and practices regarding oral health care for pregnant women in Bangladesh. Obstetricians are crucial collaborators with dental surgeons to address oral problems during pregnancy and ensure safe, optimal care. METHODS:A cross-sectional study involving 211 respondents in four divisions of Bangladesh from July 1 to December 19, 2023. Eight medical colleges, comprising an equal number of public and private institutions, were randomly selected to ensure balanced representation. A structured questionnaire consisting of 34 items was developed following an extensive literature review. The tool covered sociodemographic characteristics (7 items) and physicians' knowledge (12 items), attitudes (7 items), and practices (8 items) regarding oral health care for pregnant women. Spearman correlation coefficients were calculated to examine associations among KAP scores and demographic variables, with significance set at p < 0.05. RESULTS:Three-quarters of respondents (158, 75%) recognized a connection between hormonal changes and an increased risk of gum disease, while 60 (28.4%) respondents asserted that gum disease is linked to adverse pregnancy outcomes. Moreover, 185 (87.7%) respondents acknowledged a connection between maternal oral health and other health conditions. A total of 184 (87.2%) obstetricians advised brushing twice daily, and 190 (90%) recommended dental consultations for related problems. However, 110 (52%) respondents did not routinely provide oral health advice to expectant mothers. Additionally, 130 (61.6%) participants reported that their undergraduate curriculum did not include pregnancy-related oral health information. Standardized knowledge scores were positively correlated with education (r = 0.189, p < 0.01), age (r = 0.179, p < 0.01), and work experience (r = 0.158, p < 0.05). Standardized attitude scores were positively correlated with age (r = 0.159, p < 0.05) and work experience (r = 0.193, p < 0.01). CONCLUSION:Oral health education for obstetricians is essential to improve oral health care for expectant mothers and achieve better health outcomes.
Parkinson’s disease (PD) poses a growing global health challenge, with Bangladesh experiencing a notable rise in PD-related mortality. Early detection of PD remains particularly challenging in resource-constrained settings, where voice-based analysis has emerged as a promising non-invasive and cost-effective alternative. However, existing studies predominantly focus on English or other major languages; notably, no voice dataset for PD exists for Bengali – a language spoken by over 230 million people worldwide – posing a significant barrier to culturally inclusive and accessible healthcare solutions. Moreover, most prior studies employed only a narrow set of acoustic features, with limited or no hyperparameter tuning and feature selection, and little attention to model explainability. This restricts the development of a robust and generalizable machine learning (ML) model. To address this gap, we present BenSparX, the first Bengali conversational speech dataset for PD detection, along with a robust and explainable ML framework tailored for early diagnosis. The proposed framework incorporates diverse acoustic feature categories, systematic feature selection methods, and state-of-the-art ML classifiers with extensive hyperparameter optimization. Furthermore, to enhance interpretability and trust in model predictions, the framework incorporates SHAP (SHapley Additive exPlanations) analysis to quantify the contribution of individual acoustic features toward PD detection. Our framework achieves state-of-the-art performance, yielding an accuracy of 95.67%, F1 score of 95.62%, and AUC of 0.990. We further validated our approach by applying the framework to existing PD datasets in other languages, where it consistently outperforms state-of-the-art approaches. This study lays the foundation for identifying subtle yet clinically meaningful vocal biomarkers, particularly in low-resource settings such as Bengali-speaking populations, and represents a significant step toward equitable, explainable, and robust digital health diagnostics for neurodegenerative disorders.
OBJECTIVES:To assess the feasibility and acceptability of the home-based Bangla Heart Manual of Cardiac Rehabilitation (CR) programme for people with coronary heart disease (CHD) following revascularisation living in Bangladesh. DESIGN AND SETTINGS:Tertiary level cardiac hospital in Dhaka city; a single-centre feasibility pilot study, with a mixed-methods single arm pre-post design. PARTICIPANTS:The study involved 33 patients with CHD admitted for revascularisation (coronary artery bypass graft or percutaneous coronary intervention) between June and July 2024, selected from 72 screened. Two physiotherapists and one nurse conducted the research, focusing on patients deemed suitable for CR. INTERVENTION:Selected patients received the Bangla Heart Manual intervention that consisted of a 6-week programme of home-based CR including exercise training, self-care, relaxation, risk factor management and psychological support facilitated by a healthcare professional. PRIMARY AND SECONDARY OUTCOMES:The primary outcomes focused on feasibility, assessing patient recruitment, retention and adherence to the intervention using quantitative and qualitative methods, including interviews with patients, caregivers and healthcare professionals. Secondary outcomes measured patient-reported metrics like health-related quality of life (HeartQoL, EQ-5D-5L), psychological well-being, exercise capacity (Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale), and serious adverse events (hospitalisation and mortality) before and after the Bangla Heart Manual intervention. RESULTS:The 33 patients recruited included 29 (88%) males with a mean age of 55 years. The following feasibility outcomes were achieved: 46% (33 patients from 72 screened) recruited, 91% (30/33) retention (complete outcome data at follow-up) and 75% intervention adherence (≥6 sessions attended of 8 sessions). Improvements following CR participation were seen in patient-reported outcomes and exercise capacity. Two deaths and one rehospitalisation occurred during the study. CONCLUSIONS:This study showed that the Bangla Heart Manual home-based CR programme was acceptable and feasible for people with CHD in Bangladesh and healthcare professional staff to deliver. Our results also support the feasibility of recruitment and data collection processes for a future multicentre randomised trial to formally test the clinical and cost effectiveness of the adapted Bangla Heart Manual. TRIAL REGISTRATION NUMBER:ISRCTN1545620.
Self-reported child abuse is highly prevalent in rural Bangladesh, but caregiver-reported rates have not yet been explored. To investigate caregiver’s self-reported child physical abuse (PA) practices and estimate the prevalence of gender-specific PA among children in rural Bangladesh. A total of 1418 caregivers were randomly recruited from a population-based surveillance area in a northwestern district of Bangladesh. Data was collected from April 1 to May 31, 2017, using the ISPCAN Child Abuse Screening Tool-Parent (ICAST-P) to collect data. Past-year (PY) prevalence was calculated by categorizing all forms of PA into any versus no exposure in the past year. For lifetime prevalence, different forms of PA were categorized based on any versus no exposure either in the past year or at any point in time. Multiple logistic regression was employed to estimate the risk factors of physical abuse among children. Ethical approval was obtained from Bangladesh and Sweden. Moderate physical abuse (PA) was reported in 92
