Very little is known about the status of infertility, and facilities for its diagnosis and treatment are also scarce. However., the problem is considered to be quite prevalent. Information regarding sexual heath also is quite scanty. Maternal mortality is around 5.7 per thousand live births. Family planning programmes implemented in Bangladesh treat women as numbers to achieve certain targets or goals.
Informed consent is almost universally absent in rural areas.
The socio-economic conditions in the country hardly allow poor women much free choice in adopting family planning devices. Incentives in cash or kind are provided to poor women for tubal ligation. Educated and literate couples in urban areas voluntarily accept artificial birth control methods. But here also the information provided is partial, and often very little about the possible side effects is known to the social workers who are the main informers in this regard. The medical practitioners themselves mostly keep their mouths shut and do not feel responsible for any side effects of the methods they prescribe.