Malnutrition in Bangladesh one of highest in world

In spite of improving trends in nutrition parameters in the past few years, malnutrition figures remain one of the highest in the world, they said.

Only 32 per cent of rural and 42 per cent of urban slum children are weaned at the correct age of six months. About 35 per cent of all children are weaned inappropriately early and the remaining 31 per cent inappropriately late, they added.

They were speaking at the sharing meeting organised by Plan Bangladesh following a mid-term review of its Integrated Nutrition Project (INP).

The mid term review was conducted during November 2005-January 2006 on eight hundred under-five children, pregnant and lactating mother in 20 villages of Nilphamari, Gazipur and Dinajpur districts and three slums of Dhaka city.

While presenting the mid term evaluation report, Dr Shamim Talukder of Centre for Women and Children Health (CWCH) said the report found that 65 per cent urban and 46 per cent rural children were stunted while 66 per cent urban and 40 per cent rural children were underweight.

On the other hand, over 38 per cent rural and 28 per cent urban slum mothers over 19 years of age were underweight. Most of them even do not know properly about exclusive breast-feeding as well as complementary feeding, the evaluation report said.

"But the report also shows improvement in the areas where the INP is initiated to address the nutrition, which indicates the need for coordination among the government and non-government organisations" said TM Alamgir Azad, project manager of Plan Bangladesh.

It is recommended that referral mechanisms be established for severely malnourished children. Community management of severely malnourished children without concomitant illness can also be explored with development of local protocols of management.

The recommendations also cited that vitamins and medicines should be made available to schoolchildren and they should have regular health check-up by trained schoolteachers.

Among others, Country Director of Plan Bangladesh Edward Thomas Espey was also present.