Health and nutrition experts blamed poor feeding practice due to lack of awareness as a major cause of malnutrition of children across Bangladesh.
They told New Age that a large segment of the population is completely unaware about exclusive breast feeding and balanced supplementary feeding practice from birth up to age two years.
They called for launching a massive awareness campaign backed by nutrition education to motivate the masses to provide nutritious food to their children.
A field visit to Chakalgram, a fishing village in Savar revealed that the people really do not know what is exclusive breastfeeding or supplementary feeding.
At 17, Rina became a mother of two. Her eight-month old baby Dashami was found eating potato chips.
Rina said she has been feeding her baby a preparation of powdered rice mixed with water, sugar and salt since she was four months.
Rina was feeding her elder daughter Puja, then asleep, the powdered rice preparation using a feeding bottle.
Rina said she gives her babies juice, biscuits and chips but no rice, fish or pulses.
Asked why she said, ‘They are too young to eat rice and fish, which they can eat later.’
She said that as her husband sells fish at Chakalgram for a living the family eats plenty of fish and vegetables. But she said that her young kids have to wait to start eating fish.
Rita Shutradhar stopped breastfeeding her 11-month old baby Joyenta for what she says she has no milk. She gives her son powdered milk and some solid food to supplement it.
‘As we cannot always afford fish or eggs, we buy formula food for him,’ she said.
Bangladesh Demographic and Health Survey 2007 shows that 43 per cent of the children below six months in the country are breastfed exclusively and 20 per cent of the children in the same age bracket are fed solid or semi-solid food.
It shows that 42 per cent of the children aged six to 23 months in the country are fed according to standard feeding practice.
According to estimates done on the basis of available statistics by Khushid Ttalukder, a paediatrician and research coordinator at the Savar based Centre for Women and Child Health, approximately 240 babies below five years die every day in the country because of malnutrition.
According to it around 110 newborn die each day for not getting breast milk within one hour of birth.
Talukder based his estimates on reports of Unicef, Bangladesh Demographic and Health Survey and health journal Lancet.
Abeed Hossain Mollah, head of neonatal medicine at Dhaka Medical College Hospital said that due to lack of awareness about balanced diet, many mothers give only carbohydrates to their babies.
Even the families who can afford do not provide their babies balanced food due to sheer lack awareness, he said.
He blamed lack of awareness as the main cause of malnutrition.
He also said that people even do not know food values the babies require for proper growth and nutrition.
As a result, said Mollah, babies often suffer from various diseases.
He said the babies also suffer from various diseases due to lack vitamins and nutrition in food they are given.
As an example, he said that deficiency of zinc and protein in food retards physical growth of the children.
He said that malnutrition also hampers brain development and intellectual maturity.
People in Bangladesh generally have no idea of how to make balanced food for their children at home said SK Roy, senior scientist at the clinical science division of International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh.
He said malnourished girls grow up only to give birth to small and underweight babies continuing the cycle of under nourishment and poverty.
Blaming unawareness as the main cause of malnutrition, Fatema Parveen Chowdhury, director of Institute of Public Health Nutrition said the government had taken an awareness raising programme on proper feeding practice.
She said that the government entrusted an alliance of the NGOs to uniformly reach the awareness message across Bangladesh, she said.
