Despite fairly good economic growth and poverty reduction, the country is yet to overcome the cycle of malnutrition, which needs to be seriously pondered how to overcome the threat to public health. The study has emphasized on the need for creating more public awareness to end the early marriage which impacts child’s health from early births. It has also laid emphasis on making more food available to people to fight back nutrition deficiency. The problem is that a mother taking insufficient food makes the new generation poorly healthy.
According to the study report over 20 years in the past one third of 15-19-year-old young Bangladeshi women used to bear children. It is alarming that the proportion of 15-19-year-old young women already bearing children has fallen only marginally in the past two decades – from 33 percent in 1993-94 to 30.8 percent in 2014. Most worrying is that this statistics disproves the Health Ministry’s claim of vigorous success of the government in improving maternal health in the countryside.
The World Food Programme (WFP) report said that early marriage is largely responsible for cycle of under-nutrition, affecting child health. Report said that more than one-third (36 percent) of under-five children in Bangladesh suffer from stunting, which means some 5.5 million children are suffering from chronic malnutrition. Furthermore, prevalence of acute malnutrition, as reflected in wasting also remains alarmingly high in such children. Over 2 million children are suffering from stunning.
Many believe that a new law as the government has placed a bill in Parliament to prohibit all marriages before the age of 18 may be helpful to reduce the early marriage of women to reduce childbirth at low weight. It is very important to reduce teenage pregnancies across the country. In our view the new law if properly implemented may go a long way to address the issue.
It is true that good food production leads to improve nutrition status of people particularly in poor families. It suggests we also need a good agricultural policy to support plenty food supply to families to avoid the effects of malnutrition in younger people. However; more important is that young women must be aware of the effect of early marriages and early pregnancies; which create the cycle of under-nutrition. In our view when young women will become aware of the risks they can better plan their life and also child bearing time.
