Stakeholders on Saturday sought intervention of the prime minister’s office in the nutrition programme to scale up nutrition as the multi-sector intervention was not working.
At a roundtable on ‘Child nutrition: multi-sectoral approach for investing in the future’ organised by BRAC and The Daily Star at The Daily Star auditorium, they also demanded that the prime minister should directly supervise the programme to improve the nutrition of the people of the country.
‘We have been saying for a long time that multi-sectoral intervention is needed, but who will be responsible for it was not clear,’ said Tahmeed Ahmed, director of centre for nutrition and food security at International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh.
He said that Brazil and Bolivia could successfully improve nutrition status by intervention of the chief of their governments.
Nineteen ministries are tasked with improving the nutrition and there is no coordination between the ministries, Tahmeed said adding, ‘Only the prime minister can coordinate the ministries.’
Experts at the programme stress on locally made food preparation and also the therapeutic food to treat the severe acute malnourished children. They said if therapeutic foods were imported, that would not sustain.
SM Mustafizur Rahman, programme manager of National Nutrition Services at the Institute of Public Health Nutrition, said that about one third of children in the country took birth with low birth weight because of a cycle of malnourished adolescent mother.
The experts said that without stopping child marriage low birth weight could not be prevented.
Selina Amin, director of country projects of PLAN Bangladesh, said that the unmarried adolescent girls should take iron tablets regularly, but unfortunately no ministry were focusing on the issue or supplying the tablets.
Shams Al Arifeen, head of child section at ICDDR,B, said, ‘We cannot establish the food security as the only cause of malnutrition and it is essential to aware and change the food habit.’
-With New Age input
