ProblemIn Afghanistan the challenges of development are daunting, mainly as a result of many years of conflict. The formation of a new government in 2001 paved the way for new initiatives from within and outside the country. BRAC (formerly Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee), a Bangladeshi nongovernmental organization with a long history of successful work, extended its development model to Afghanistan in 2002. Local setting Provincial Afghanistan. Approach BRAC has implemented programmes in Afghanistan in the areas of health, education, microfinance, women's empowerment, agriculture, capacity development and local government strengthening, and has taken many of these programmes to scale. Relevant changes With a total staff of over 3000 (94% Afghan and the rest Bangladeshis), BRAC now works in 21 of the country's 34 provinces. BRAC runs 629 non-formal primary schools with 18 155 students, mostly girls. In health, BRAC has trained 3589 community workers who work at the village level in preventive and curative care. BRAC runs the largest microfinance programme in the country with 97 130 borrowers who cumulatively borrowed over US$ 28 million with a repayment rate of 98%. Lessons learned Initial research indicates significant improvement in access to health care. Over three years, much has been achieved and learned. This paper summarizes these experiences and concludes that collaboration between developing countries can work, with fine-tuning to suit local contexts and traditions. Voir page 680 le résumé en français. En la página 681 figura un resumen en español.

Bangladesh is a fish producing country from the ancient history due to its deltaic nature agro-ecologically. Accordingly fish marketing systems developed in traditional systems sincelong. This study was conducted in two retail fish markets located in Rajbari and Barisal Sadar Upazila in the south central region of Bangladesh focusing public health and hygiene condition of retailers. The questionnaire interview with 30 retailers and participatory rural appraisal (PRA) tools were used to get the information from the retailers and other value chain stakeholders. About 13% of the retailers had no education, however 60% had primary level and 27% had secondary level of education. Although many of them were literate, their knowledge and practice about public health, hygiene and sanitation was found to be very poor. Due to lack of knowledge on public health, they were found to be infected by various contagious diseases such as common cold (cough, coryza etc.), diarrhoea, lesion (lesion on hands, between fingers, on the tip of the fingers, between toes, on the nail and tip of the toes etc.) and skin disease. About 57% of them were affected with lesion on hands, while 33, 23, 7, 13 and 10% were affected with lesion between fingers, between toes, on the tip fingers, on the nail and tip of toes and skin disease on legs, respectively.Fish markets operated by them were ill-managed, unhygienic and unscientific. So, the hygiene and sanitation system of retail fish markets were very poor and unhealthy. Market should have adequate water supply, toilets and other sanitation facilities. Due to poor infrastructural facilities in harvest and post-harvest, landing, handling, preservation, distribution, marketing and quality assurance, the fish retailers suffered from serious health problems. Good personal hygiene management is therefore essential for the safe handling and preparation of fish and fisheries products. To ensure this, quick and proper action should be needed by the government, particularly by the local government and rural development (LGRD) authorities.