BU Research Blog

Last week the internet newspaper Online Khabar published ‘Celebrating Nepal Female Community Health Volunteers, but for how much longer?‘.  This article is written by Sankalpa Bhattarai, a researcher based at Green Tara Nepal, and BU’s Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen about the future of Female Community Health Volunteers (FCHVs) in Nepal.  In the late 1980s the Government of Nepal introduced the FCHV programmea at a time, Nepal was one of only two countries in the world where the life expectancy for women was lower than that of men.  These FCHVs were recruited locally in their own communities to help reduce infant and maternal mortality.  They provided health education, immunisation, and information on family planning and hygiene, as well as offering basic first aid services and referring people in their communities to basic or advanced health services when needed.

The online newspaper article is based on a paper we published last year as a Commentary in the Journal of Manmohan Memorial Institute of Health Sciences [1].  Our previous research work on FCHVs included a paper in PLOS Global Public Health [2], as well as two further papers based on the Ph.D. study by Dr. Sarita Panday [3-4].

We like to take this opportunity to thank Dr. Pramod Regmi, Principal Academic in International Health in the Faculty of Health, Environment & Medical Science, for connecting us to the editor of Online Khabal.

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

Centre for Midwifery & Women’s Health

References

1. Bhattarai, S., & van Teijlingen, E. (2024). Nepal Needs A Two-Pronged Approach to Secure Future of Its Female Community Health Volunteers (FCHVs). Journal of Manmohan Memorial Institute of Health Sciences, 9(1), 43–48. https://doi.org/10.3126/jmmihs.v9i1.68640
2. Panday, S., Barnes, A., van Teijlingen, E. (2024) Exploring the motivations of female community health volunteers in primary healthcare provision in rural Nepal: a qualitative study, PLOS Global Public Health Aug 1;4(8):e0003428. doi: 10.1371/journal.pgph.0003428.
3. Panday, S., Bissell, P., van Teijlingen, E., Simkhada, P. (2017) The contribution of female community health volunteers (FCHVs) to maternity care in Nepal: a qualitative study, BMC Health Services Research 17:623 be/vz9C
4. Panday, S., Bissell, P., van Teijlingen, E., Simkhada, P. (2019) Perceived barriers to accessing female community health volunteers’ services amongst ethnic minority women in Nepal: a qualitative study, PLoS ONE 14(6): e0217070 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0217070