Sabina Faiz Rashid Social and Medical Anthropology James P. Grant School of Public Health BRAC University, Bangladesh Durbolota (Weakness), Chinta Rog (Worry Illness), and Poverty Explanations of White Discharge among Married Adolescent Women in an Urban Slum in Dhaka, Bangladesh I carried out ethnographic fieldwork among 153 married adolescent girls, aged 15–19, in a Dhaka slum from December 2001 to January 2003, including 50 in- depth interviews and eight case studies. I also held discussions with family and community members. In this article, I focus on popular understandings of vaginal discharge being caused by durbolota (weakness) and chinta rog (worry illness), as mentioned by young women. Eighty-eight young women reported that they had experienced white discharge, blaming it on a number of factors such as stress and financial hardships, tensions in the household, marital instability, hunger anxiety, and reproductive burdens. For married adolescent women in the urban slum, white discharge has many levels of meaning linked to the broader social, political, and material inequalities in their everyday lives. Keywords: [weakness and worry illness, white discharge, tonics, urban poverty, ethnography, Bangladesh] Dhatu roge [discharge] can happen because of lack of food in the body. It is because of our poverty. If one does not eat properly, then calcium [nutrition] comes out of the bones and leaves the body. From poverty comes chinta [worries], and then from that dhatu will starting coming out much more from the body. [Hasina, 18 years old, two children, abandoned] Structural and social inequalities, a brutal political economy, and neglect by policy makers and the government have left the urban poor in Bangladesh marginalized socially and economically. Little is known about the combined effects of macro- political and economic conditions and social and cultural factors on urban slum women’s understandings of reproductive illnesses. In this article, I focus on the lives of married adolescent women living in an urban slum and how their explanations MEDICAL ANTHROPOLOGY QUARTERLY, Vol. 21, Issue 1, pp. 108–132, ISSN 0745- 5194, online ISSN 1548-1387. C  2007 by the American Anthropological Association. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for permission to photocopy or reproduce arti- cle content through the University of California Press’s Rights and Permissions website, http://www.ucpressjournals. com/reprintInfo.asp. DOI: 10.1525/MAQ.2007.21.1.108. 108