Diana was feeding salted soft rice to her one-year-old son Rahul, who was lying on the corridor of the family house at Bakhtrpur, a village in Savar, about 24 kilometres from the capital city.
‘This is my son’s supplementary food as I cannot afford anything better,’ she said, not happy about the family’s affordability.
Diana was only depicting a picture of nutritional status of the children common in all the five neighbouring snake-charmers’ villages.
She said the she still breastfed her baby, but could not afford fish or pulses to improve the supplementary diet for her son.
‘I cannot go out to work to supplement the family earnings as there is none to attend my baby at home,’ she said.
Nine-month old Bipul was in his mother’s lap in the family shelter in the neighbouring village of Kanchanpur.
His mother Biplabi only breastfeeds her son as the family can afford no supplementary food a nine-month old needs.
‘Besides, as my son frequently suffers from diarrhoea and catches cold I don’t give him rice as supplementary food,’ she said.
The stories of Diana and Biplabi were no isolated experience of the families in three other neighbouring villages, Porabari, Arapara and Sinduria, all settlements of snake charmers.
Each and every family in the five villages had identical stories to tell.
But what would strike a reporter most on a field trip to the area is the mothers’ lack of awareness about what they should feed their newborns up to the age of six months and the supplementary food they need as they grow up to the age of two years.
The situation is compounded by the families’ insolvency. Their financial status don’t allow them feed their babies even the basic nutritional diets.
The mothers pleaded ignorance about the need to only breastfeed the new born up to the age of six months, when the question of supplementary food arises.
They said that they never heard what is balanced diet.
Due to ‘very poor’ nutritional status a majority of the babies across Bangladesh do not grow up with the needed immunity to keep the diseases at bay, said SK Roy, senior scientist at the clinical science division of International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh.
No wonder many of them often suffer from various diseases,’ he said.
And sick babies cannot eat enough which makes them more malnourished, he said.
He emphasised on exclusive breastfeeding of the newborns and for giving home-made supplementary food to them when they are six months and onwards until they are two year old.
There is no alternative to ‘exclusive breastfeeding,’ he said, explaining, it means providing only breast milk to a baby up to six months, and nothing else, not even water.
According to the Unicef National Report Bangladesh 2008, around 46 per cent children below five years are not as tall as they should be due to malnutrition.
Due to the same reason, it says, 15 per cent of the children are skinny and 40 per cent are under-weight according to their age.
According to the report the children in the rural areas suffer more from malnutrition compared to in the urban areas.
Marriage in adolescence, said SK Roy, do not allow proper physical growth of would be mothers for healthy reproduction.
And the girls need more nutritious food to grow into healthy women at the time of their marriage, said health and nutrition experts.
Under age pregnancy makes mothers even more malnourished as the babies absorb nutrition from her body, increasing the risks for both they said.
They also said that children cannot grow properly in the womb of a malnourished mother.
As a result, they said, about 40 per cent of children born on time are underweight, that is less than 2.5 kg.
According to Bangladesh Demographic and Health Survey, the overall nutrition status of children below five years remained unchanged over the last 10 years.
The picture of exclusive breastfeeding in the country also remained unchanged during the period, it says.
Roy attributed improper diet as the main reasons of child malnutrition.
He called for making the people aware about what is proper diet for the kids.
The babies at the snake charmer settlement take only carbohydrates and no protein, fat or minerals they need for proper growth, he said.
Roy said the intellectual development and bon development of children are bound to be hampered if they do not get proper nutrition.
He suggested for frequent feeding of the children in standard quality and quantity so that they got proper nutrition.
Institute of Public Health Nutrition director Fatema Parveen Chowdhury said, ‘We do not work for providing nutritional materials for any group in any specific area.’
But, she said, the government took a programme only to make the people aware about proper feeding practices through NGOs across the country.
She termed lack of awareness as the main cause of child malnutrition in Bangladesh.
She hoped that the health workers would counsel mothers about proper feedings practice once the community clinics were established.
