Hasmat does not know his real age, estimating that he is about 65 years old. His count is based on the death of his first child 35 years ago, as he remembers the day clearly.
His daughter Hasna was born two years after his marriage. She died when she was just two and a half years old.
“One afternoon, when everyone was busy, the girl walked to a knee deep water body, just a few yards from the house. We found her body later,” said Hasmat, a resident of Raghunathpur Sholarchar village in Kamaria Union, 12-13 km south-east of Sherpur Sadar.
Misfortune would visit the family again many years later, when Hasmat’s one-year-old granddaughter Alia Afrin Ritu died in the same place in the same manner as Hasna just seven months ago.
Alia’s mother had left the child with a teenage relative to attend some household chores. When the teenager left the child alone to go play with her friends, the one-year-old crawled into the water.
Farzana, the mother, said she had known about what had happened to Hasna and was always extra careful with her own daughter. But one careless decision was all it took for tragedy to strike once again.
“This would not have happened if it had not been the Covid-19 period,” a sobbing Farzana told this newspaper.
Farzana had been sending her child to a community childcare centre to ensure that she was not left unattended when Farzana was busy with household chores. Her daughter also enjoyed playing with the other children there.
“Sometimes I would go to see her and breastfeed her at the center. She was happy,” Farzana said. When day-care centres closed due to the pandemic, Farzana had to find someone else to attend to the child while she was working.
Months later, the centers, called Anchal, are open again. The centres in different districts look after hundreds of children for five hours each day, from 9am.
The community-based centres are being operated by the Centre for Injury Prevention and Research, Bangladesh (CIPRB) with support from Bloomberg Philanthropies. Officials said the centres have changed parenting styles in rural areas, as guardians find them useful for early learning.
At the Anchal centres, two trained women take care of the children for the designated hours.
Nipa Begum, one of the caregivers at a centre in Sholarchar village, said: “Children come here to play and learn. We teach them easy rhymes and poems. They get some lessons from the pre-primary syllabus as well. When they are busy with us, their parents can do their work.
“Parents now depend on Anchal Centres. It has changed their day’s routine as well,” she said.
The working hours of the centres have been chosen keeping in mind when the majority of parents are most busy, to ensure that children do not have to be left unattended.
The operation of the centres has dramatically reduced drowning among children under five in the country. The chance to interact with other children also makes them eager to go to the centres.
“Children like the Anchal Ma (caregiver) as they take care of them for a long time,” said Jesmin Akhter, guardian of one child.
A Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) survey found that drowning is highly prevalent in rural areas and accounts for about 10% of child deaths, while Bangladesh Demographic and Health Survey found that drowning is responsible for 58% of deaths among children 12-59 months of age.
Recognizing the severity of the problem, the United Nations in April 2021 passed its first-ever resolution on Global Drowning Prevention after the resolution was brought to the UN by Bangladesh and Ireland and co-sponsored by 79 other countries.
Following the Anchal Model, the government has also undertaken a Tk271.82 crore initiative that will offer daycare centre facilities for the children at their early childhood education stage. As many as 200,000 children in 45 upazilas of 16 districts will be able to avail daycare services in three years' time.
A total of 8,000 community-based childcare centres, each equipped with the capacity of taking care of 25 children will be set up under the project.
According to the officials of CIPRB, they are running 532 community day-care centres in Sherpur Sadar and each is serving a maximum of 25 children. When the centers were closed during the pandemic, the caregivers went to the households and taught the children.
The centres are also operating in other districts such as Narsingdi, Chandpur, Cumilla, Sirajganj, Patuakhali and Barguna. They are hosting nearly 80,000 children across 3,200 centres.
CIPRB Deputy Executive Director Dr Aminur Rahman said their data shows that the care centres can reduce deaths by 82% if they are functional in most rural areas.
“These centres also promote education for children at the early childhood stage which help them in the future,” he said.
