Reproductive Health of Pavement-dwellers in Dhaka city: Linking Empirical Data to Health Belief Model

Pavement-dwellers are overwhelming the big cities of the Third-world countries day by day. This burgeoning plight spawns so many problems that veer the development process. Migration specialists have brought some causes of internal migration to light in their erudite works: huge population pressure; poverty; malnutrition, and hunger; unemployment; natural disasters (i. e., river erosion, drought, salinity, water logging, cyclone etc); seasonal deprivation; political, cultural and religious factors; scope for informal business in city and so on. Needless to say, women and children are more vulnerable among the pavement-dwellers in terms of their health and security. The current study treads on pavement-dwellers’ heels and demonstrates the portrait of reproductive health conditions of pavement dwellers: asthma (78.18%), hypertension (47%), low blood pressure (58.18%), symptoms of depression (63.64%) and so on. This fastidious study vindicates that physical abuse (21.82%), untrained birth attendants (52.73%), and abortion are striking factors of examining reproductive health. This study corroborates that there is a strong association of income and education with reproductive health.