Editorial
Global Hunger Index
We have a long way to go
That Bangladesh has gone two notches up from the 70th position to the 68th in the Global Hunger Index (GHI) this year is good news. The government deserves a word of appreciation for their steadfast commitment to raising food output. We are also happy to note that it has fared better than India on a range of social indicators including reduced child mortality rate.
We believe, however, that we are still far away from reaching the desired level. The GHI report says Bangladesh, along with other countries in South Asia, has the highest prevalence of underweight children which is 40 per cent. Quite clearly, in spite of the little progress in terms of better access to food and improvement in child mortality rate, the country's hunger scene is yet to be lifted out of what the said report terms the 'alarming range'.
Given the country's food production capacity has nearly reached self-sufficiency in the past few years, we are dismayed to learn that problems related to undernourished and underweight children still persist. Evidently, the situation owes largely to poor distribution chain and unscientific food preservation system. Every year quite a huge amount of locally produced food items gets rotten due to lack of modern preservation facilities. Add to that the malaise of large-scale food adulteration, what we get to eat is also unsafe.
As a joint study by the government and USAID has recently revealed, child malnutrition has a lot to do with changing food consumption pattern in rural areas. In villages, people in general and children in particular consume more rice and less protein-rich items such as meat and fish, and milk and milk-based products. Although lack of knowledge on nutrition is partly responsible, increasing economic hardship in the face of soaring prices of essential food items has played a bigger role in this. Resultantly, as scientific researches have shown, child malnutrition visibly bears upon adulthood, manifesting itself in the form of lack of physical fitness, which takes its toll on the economic life of the entire nation.
Undoubtedly, child malnutrition is an overarching problem for the nation. It is upon today's children that we rest our hope of building the country and taking it ahead in the international arena. Likewise, generations of undernourished children will only set the country on a regressive course, stunting social development and economic growth.
Therefore, while controlling the food prices effectively, the government must strengthen the distribution chain and food preservation system so as to ensure better access to protein-rich foods both in villages and the underdeveloped areas in cities.
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