Can medicine-sellers of urban Bangladesh meet STD clients needs?
Saifur Rahman and Professor Barkat-e-Khuda. Operations Research Project, Health and Population Extension Division, ICDDR,B: Centre for Health and Population Research, Mohakhali, Dhaka-1212, Dhaka, Bangladesh, 880-2-9881661, robi@bdcom.com Objective: Assessed the profiles of medicine-sellers of an urban area of Bangladesh, their knowledge on STDs/HIV/AIDS, and their services in managing STD cases. Methodology: This is a descriptive and cross-sectional study. In total, 201 medicine-sellers from 157 pharmacies of Tongi were surveyed. A self-administered questionnaire was used for collecting data to explore the profiles and reported STD case-management practices of medicine-sellers and mystery-shopping events to observe their practices. All the 201 medicine-sellers completed the questionnaire, and the mystery-shopping events were conducted in 33 randomly-selected pharmacies. In the mystery-shopping events, trained persons pretended to be STD clients and sought services from selected pharma
