NUK's health programs began inside garment factories, but today its largest health investment is in rural community hospitals — built to close a basic care gap in districts where it had previously run other programs.
Egarosindur Community Hospital
Egarosindur Community Hospital was established in October 2000 with financial assistance from the Japanese Embassy, founded to address maternal, child, and adolescent girls' health care following the devastating flood and cyclone that struck the area in 1998. It serves Pakundia Upazila in Kishoreganj district, one of the poorest communities in the region, and has since been restructured to also function as a dedicated eye hospital addressing the area's serious shortage of eye care services.
The hospital's outpatient department sees patients daily from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., referring them onward to antenatal and postnatal care, reproductive health counselling, paediatrics, eye care, physiotherapy, and dental services. Female field organisers also conduct home visits to pregnant women and new mothers who cannot easily reach the hospital.
Kishoreganj Eye Hospital
Cataracts are responsible for roughly 80% of blindness in Bangladesh — a condition that is treatable, but only by a specialist with the right training and equipment, which remains scarce in rural districts. Kishoreganj Eye Hospital exists to close that gap, running outreach eye camps that screen rural residents and refer those needing surgery into the hospital itself.
A newer hospital in Savar Upazila
NUK's most recent health initiative is a new eye hospital based in Dhamsona Union, Savar Upazila, in Dhaka District — an area with a large population of low-income migrant workers, many of them employed in the same garment factories NUK has worked with for decades. The hospital extends NUK's eye care model to this dense, underserved industrial community.
Part of a national push
This work sits within the World Health Organization's "Vision 2020" campaign to eliminate avoidable blindness globally. Bangladesh remains behind the pace needed to meet that goal, which is part of why NUK continues to prioritise outreach screening and low-cost surgery in the districts it serves.
From factory clinics to permanent institutions
This health network traces back to NUK's original factory-based health services for garment workers. As those on-site programs matured and were transferred to factory management, NUK redirected its health investment toward the rural communities that had far less access to care of any kind.