I am from Chittagong Hill Tracts (Rangamati district), the south-east hills of Bangladesh. The CHT is a place of thirteen indigenous communities. I belong to the ‘Tanchangya’ community which is the fourth largest community in terms of population. Each ethnic community has different a socio-cultural background.
However, there are also some common values and rituals among those ethnic groups. Although the peace accord has been made about one decade back, CHT indigenous people still lag behind from the main stream population of the country in respect of economy, health and education.
My bachelor degree is inmedical science, M.B.B.S. (Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery). I passed from Chittagong Medical College, Bangladesh in 2004. After one year internship in my medical college hospital, I worked for about 2 years with Medesins Sans Frontiers, Family Planning Association of Bangladesh and some other local hospitals in Bangladesh. Then I got an AusAID scholarship of the Master of Health and Development program at Flinders University.
The course I did at Flinders is very relevant since Bangladesh has many population health problema and many of the population are in poor socio-economic situations. The dual specialty, public health and development studies, in the MHID program helped me to explore and analyze those issuesfrom multiple aspects. Viewing health from a social determinants perspective as well as upstream to downstream factors, log frame analysis and many more innovative frameworks and theories that I gained through this course broadened my view to better understand the health problems. I believe my knowledge and experience gained fromFlinders will help me to do health needs assessment, development of program design and implementation of programs to achieve desired health goals.
