In spite of making substantial gains in the health sector, Bangladesh continues to pay a heavy price for malnutrition among children, with an annual loss of around Tk78bn in economic productivity, experts say quoting a recent study.
The worrying trend of acute malnutrition among rural children continues to persist. More than 5% children of the country die before reaching their fifth birthday, mostly of preventable diseases. Malnutrition is blamed to be the underlying cause of about one-third of these deaths, the study says.
Some 42% under-five children are suffering from stunted growth while 36% are too thin for their age – a sign of nutrient shortage. Another 16% children are estimated to be affected by nutritional deficiency, weighing too little for their height.
Experts made these references at the launching ceremony of a three-year nutrition project taken up by National Nutrition Services (NNS), Revitalization of Community Health Care Initiatives in Bangladesh (RCHCIB) and international aid charity Save the Children.
The project, which will stretch over three upazilas with high malnutrition rates, is expected to provide nutrition services to 110,000 under-five children and 18,000 women of reproductive age.
The upazilas are Satkania of Chittagong, Kulaura of Maulavibazar and Muladi of Barisal – all previously uncovered by NNS.
The stakeholders hope that the project would “provide them with insights” to bring about a positive change in the country’s child nutrition status. They also said they would “test new innovations and approaches” during the anti-malnutrition drive, alongside fine-tuning the existing training materials and methods.
“This is kind of like a trial project. Lessons learnt from the experiment would be fed into national nutrition programme,” said Michael Foley, health and nutrition director of Save the Children.
Some 900 health workers would be trained for counselling 110,000 children and 18,000 women under the project funded by Unilever Foundation by October 2015.
Project director Dr Makhdumna Nargis said, “We have attained self-sufficiency in food, which means we have enough food grains for our people. But we are lagging behind in nutritional terms. So what we need now is greater awareness about nutrition and nourishment among people.”