Monitoring helps services to reach the poor: the urban primary healthcare project in Bangladesh

Introduction The Second Urban Primary Health Care Project (UPHCP-II) in Bangladesh started in 2005 with a mandate to extend every component of health services to at least 30% of the poor in catchment areas. Poor were identified through household survey and were provided with free service entitlement cards by the service delivery partners. UPHCP-II started service delivery in partnership with contracted non-government organisations (NGO) in 2005. The Project maintains a robust health management information system with web-based data uploaded by the provider NGOs. In 2007, the project employed a third party (HLSP) for monitoring service delivery using specially designed tools called Integrated Supervisory Instruments. These tools measure performances of partner NGOs with pre set indicators including services to the poor. In this paper we analyse this gap using a case of institutional delivery to assess the coverage of the poor over a period of 2005 to 2009.