A new study has revealed that 41 per cent children below five years of age in Bangladesh are stunted due to malnutrition and about 70 per cent infants are anemic. The study was presented by Centre for Nutrition and Food Security (CNFS) director Dr Tahmeed Ahmed at a meeting on “Scaling up nutrition: An urgent call for commitment and multi-sector action” at the BRAC Inn Centre here. The meeting was organised by BRAC and it was attended by donors, NGOs, members of the civil society, academics and government officials.
Dr Ahmed said political commitment to nutrition was rising worldwide and collective action was needed to end malnutrition.
The participants blamed lack of coordination among various ministries and other institutions for the lack of proper nutrition in the country. They also highlighted the importance of scaling up nutrition in Bangladesh, especially focusing on the 1,000-day nutrition programme for all and multi-sector approaches to combat malnutrition among children and women.
They also said that despite several achievements in the health and development sectors, Bangladesh was still among the 36 highest-burden countries in nutrition, with 36 million people either malnourished or chronically underfed year after year.The participants concluded that it was important to recognize the need to adopt a “nutrition lens” to focus on the progress in this matter.
Dr Kaosar Afsana, director of health, nutrition and population programme of BRAC, in her welcome speech said solutions to malnourishment must be identified and scaled up in the sectors of health, woman empowerment, social protection, agriculture, food security, education, rural development and poverty reduction.
She added that nutrition investment can help break the cycle of poverty and increase a country’s GDP by at least two to three per cent annually. “Investing just $1 in nutrition can result in a $30 return in increased health, schooling and economic productivity,” she said.
Sir Fazle Hasan Abed, founder and chairperson of BRAC, observed that people must be made aware about nutrition and health and these topics should be included in school and college curriculum.He added that there should be projects on monitoring of child survival programmes and growth.
-With The Independent input
