Proximity to Health Care Centres and Service Use : The Case of Community Clinics in Bangladesh

We investigate how distance from heath centres affects service utilisation for women and children. Relying on five rounds of recent nationally representative demographic and health survey data from Bangladesh, our logistic regression analyses reveal that proximity to health centres barely affects the utilisation of health care services for women and children, even in the country's rural areas. Interestingly, this indicates that the newly established Community Clinics have not significantly contributed to the country's uptake of health care services. The low service utilisation may result from their poor standard at the local health centres indicating that improving the service quality can help Bangladesh in raising the uptake of health care services. Other ways to encourage people, like mandating ANC and PNC visits and vaccination and the introduction of referral services, can also improve the health service utilisation rate