RHSTEP is working to raise awareness on sexual and reproductive heath and rights and thus people must have access to related health services and to make them empowered to exercise control over their sexual and reproductive lives.

Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) is providing support to the Sexual and Reproductive Health Rights (SRHR) program in Bangladesh. A formal agreement between Sida and Reproductive Health Services Training and Education Program (RHSTEP) was signed for a three years project on SRHR issues on 19 March 2008 at Royal Swedish Embassy.

Agreement signed by Her Excellency Ms.Britt F. Hagström, the Ambassador of Royal Swedish Embassy and Quazi Suraiya Sultana, Executive Director, RHSTEP

Her Excellency Ms. Britt F. Hagström, the Ambassador of Sweden and Quazi Suraiya Sultana, Executive Director of RHSTEP signed the agreement on behalf of their own institutions. The fund will be utilized through a consortium of RHSTEP and Bangladesh Association for Prevention of Septic Abortion (BAPSA).

Poor awareness of Bangladeshi women about their sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) aggravate the condition of sexual and reproductive ill health. A large proportion of Bangladeshi women because of the existing socio-economic condition marked by poverty, illiteracy, and male domination have little or no control to decide freely and responsibly on matters related to sexuality, sexual and reproductive health including the number, spacing and timing of their children and fail to exercise such rights free of discrimination, coercion and violence. Even the service providers at the different levels of health service delivery facilities have traditional perception about SRHR and are not sensitive to the rights of women.

Only recently, GoB has undertaken countrywide orientation program to sensitize health service personnel about women s SRHR in a very limited scale. Even then, it will take years for the health personnel to change their age old mind set and repeated effort and frequent reorientation will be necessary so that they regularly ensure proper counseling to make women aware of their rights by providing adequate and appropriate information related to sexual and reproductive health and rights. Every year millions of Bangladeshi women experience high life threatening risks related pregnancy, chronic and other serious reproductive health problems.

In this backdrop, the consortium of three organizations RHSTEP, and BAPSA has started new project titled- Comprehensive Reproductive and Sexual Heath Program including MR Services, Training and BCC (Comprehensive RSH program) since July 2007 and will end in June 2010. In this phase the consortium will also expand their services to hard to reach areas in Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) to address the unmet need of SRH services of the disadvantaged indigenous population of CHT. The Consortium will create a broad community supported network for better dissemination of SRHR and strong referral system for meeting the emergency need of the population and providing services with utmost care.

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