The Final Household Survey of Monitoring and Evaluation of Bangladesh Urban Primary Health Care Project is a large and innovative project. The project’s primary objectives were to improve the health of the urban poor and reduce preventable mortality and morbidity, especially among women and children. The project aim was to achieve this objective by ensuring the delivery of a package of preventive, promotional, and curative health services to the poor in the four largest cities of the country. These assignments encompassed baseline, mid-term, end-line household surveys, baseline, mid-term and end-line health facility surveys including regular monitoring of facilities that used Integrated Supervisory Instrument (ISI), and participatory evaluation studies.

For monitoring and evaluation of the project performances, Mitra and Associates, over the six-year project period, carried out demarcation of partnership agreement areas in four city corporations— Dhaka, Chittagong, Khulna, and Rajshahi, 4 household surveys (1999, 2002, 2004 and 2005) each involving a sample of about 26,000 households with effective interviews (for actual data) of about 19,000 women, 3 health facility surveys (2001, 2002 & 2004) including regular monitoring of the facilities (ISI), and PRA qualitative study to identify barriers affecting health of the urban people.

The survey was implemented in collaboration with the Johns Hopkins University/USA. Mitra and Associates carried out the following activities: prepared questionnaire; pretested the questionnaire and finalized the questionnaire; recruited and trained field personnel; selected sample sites and conducted household listing operation; selected household sample; prepared enumerator’s manual; conducted fieldwork for data collection; processed data; analyzed data and wrote report.

Mitra and Associates implemented the project in collaboration with the JHU/USA.