Slum children in Dhaka suffer from different types of waterborne diseases caused by intake of polluted water and insufficient sanitation facilities, experts have said.
They are of the opinion that the waterborne diseases cause drainage of nutrition form the slum children’s bodies and make them malnourished.Abu Bakar is a two-year-old child living in a slum at Malibagh in city. He plays in the street, with his body full of mud but he does not look like a two-year boy as he cannot walk or stand properly.
His mother Khaleda, the mother of four children, said Abu Bakar recovered from diarrhoea a week back. ‘He contracted diarrhoea last week. My children often suffer from this disease.’
She complained that Abu Bakar was not growing properly and often suffering from fever and cold. ‘Frequently he suffers from fever and cold.’
This slum has no water supply system and people living in the slum have to bring water from the nearby government college or other places.
These people usually use street for defecation and occasionally go to the nearby kitchen market’s toilet for which they have to spend some money.
‘Our children do not go there. They use the roadsides for defecation,’ said Shapla, another woman of the slum.
Maintaining personal hygiene is beyond their capacity, said Shapla, adding, ‘We have to bring water for all types of work including drinking, cooking, bathing, cleaning utensils and for use after defecation. So we cannot wash hands or wash the hands of the children all the time.’
Shapla’s daughter Sharmin, one year and 10 months old, is suffering from skin disease and also from diarrhoea, said her mother.
The picture was the same in a slum near Tejgaon where water has to be brought from outside the slum and had no sanitary facilities.
‘Water has a direct link with the nutrition,’ said SM Mustafizur Rahman, programme manager of National Nutrition Services of Institute of Public Health and Nutrition.
The natural growth of a child would be affected if the child suffers from diseases, he said.
‘Many parents may afford fish or egg, but nutrients drain from the body of the child with diarrhoea and other diseases,’ he said.
Washing hands with soap properly before feeding children aged six to 24 months and also while preparing their food could cut down the incidence of diarrhoea and lower the risk of acute respiratory infection almost by 50 per cent, health experts have estimated.
The study ‘Hand washing and complementary feeding in Bangladesh’, conducted by the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh and Alive & Thrive conducted last year, shows that only 15 per cent of the mothers of under-two children were aware that that hand washing without soap before food preparation and feeding children were responsible for diarrhoea infections.
The study also shows that almost none of them are aware about the links between respiratory illness and hand washing.
Basically, only balanced food cannot make a child healthy if water and sanitation and as well as hand washing practice is not followed, said Rukhsana Haider, former regional adviser (Nutrition) of WHO.
‘We are counselling the mothers for wash their hands before feeding their children, but as these mothers do not have water supply facilities at convenient places, they usually do not practice it. Event their children’s hands are dirty and often they use the same water for hand washing which was previously used for washing dishes,’ she added.
They stressed clean water supply and sanitation system for maintaining personal hygiene to ensure nutrition of the children.
They also stressed fulfilling government’s commitment to ensure supply of pure drinking water for all by 2011 and provide sanitation facilities for every household by 2013.
-With New Age input
