Smart Mobile Child Clinics is a pilot bringing maternal and child healthcare to families on Bangladesh’s shifting river islands, delivered by women entrepreneurs and subscription telemedicine, and designed to keep running after the pilot ends.
On the chars, the shifting islands of silt in Bangladesh’s northern rivers, seasonal floods cut communities off from the formal health system for weeks at a time. Health facilities exist, but the last-mile infrastructure to reach them does not.
On Folimarir and Kharua chars in Lalmonirhat, families face long journeys and prohibitive transport and treatment costs to reach care. The single community clinic lacks basic diagnostic tools, and the district’s doctor-to-population ratio sits far below the level the World Health Organization considers adequate. For a mother with a sick infant, distance itself becomes the barrier.
Figures from the programme assessment.
Rather than delivering care with external staff, the pilot builds the market and community structures that can sustain access on their own. Women entrepreneurs own and operate the mobile clinics; families subscribe monthly; and qualified doctors are reached remotely. It is Max Foundation’s systems-strengthening approach applied to one of the hardest places to reach.
The preparatory phase established the partnerships, protocols and evidence the model needs before operations begin in 2026. These figures describe what the pilot has built to test whether entrepreneurship, digital health and subscription financing can reach isolated communities at a cost that markets and government can sustain.
The Smart Mobile Child Clinics pilot is run with the Eco-Social Development Organization (ESDO) and SK Foundation, with telemedicine delivered through Square Health Limited. It sits within Max Foundation’s wider Healthy Village work in Bangladesh.
