Editorial
Children's nourishment under threat
Future in jeopardy
Despite government claims to the contrary, data published by government institutions point to some disturbing facts about child malnutrition and mortality. Child malnutrition has decreased nationally over the last five years, according to Bangladesh Demographic and Health Service (BDHS) 2011 but there is a flipside to it. This is reflected in the Sylhet division where up to 49 per cent of all children belonging to lower income groups suffer from large-scale malnutrition, this figure goes up to 51 per cent in families where mothers are less educated.
These statistics all point to changing food patterns, that too for the worse, in rural Bangladesh. A joint study by the Bangladesh government and USAID on income and expenditure at Thana level concludes that food consumption patterns at village level have undergone a fundamental transformation. The rural populace were found to be consuming more rice and less protein. Protein including meat and fish, milk and milk-based products consumption at rural level was found to be much lower than urban centres of population. Although the lack of knowledge on nutrition is partly to blame, there is no denying the fact that economic hardship has played a major role in this lopsided food basket rural people in general, and children in particular, are consuming today. On this issue, according to Trading Corporation of Bangladesh data, average prices of food essentials like cooking oil, lentil, fish, farm chicken and free range chicken have shot up between 9.68% and 38.46% over the last one year.
Indeed, the case of child malnutrition is directly responsible for half the child mortality Bangladesh suffers each year. Looking at it from the economic perspective, malnutrition costs the nation an estimated Tk75 billion in lost productivity as adults who have suffered malnutrition as children lack the physical strength of average healthy adults. Even if one looks at the national average of 41 per cent of children suffering malnutrition, the fact that 4 out of 10 adults in the future workforce having less of an ability to contribute is a daunting figure. Food aid that is tailor-made to children's needs is needed and steps need to be taken today as opposed to tomorrow to make them available nationwide.
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