Tareen Rahman :
‘In Bangladesh, under nutrition is estimated to be the underlying cause of about 60 pc of childhood deaths’, said Shams El Arifeen ,Research Director for Transform Nutrition and Director of the Center for Child and Adolescent Health for the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research (ICDDR,B), Bangladesh.
ICDDR, B is the leading public health and nutrition research organization in Bangladesh. It is the main partner of Transform Bangladesh. Arifeen disclosed that Save the Children, World Food Programme (WFP) and DFID (Department for International Development), Bangladesh, also support several social protection programmes in Bangladesh to improve food security of vulnerable populations.
According to Arifeen, although there has been improvements in underweight prevalence, the current rate of reduction of malnutrition at 1.27 percent points per year means that we are unlikely to
achieve the nutrition target of Millennium Development Goal (MDG) 1 by 2015.
Not only in Bangladesh, malnutrition is now an underlying cause of nearly half of all under-5 deaths worldwide, and an increasing proportion of all child deaths occur in the first month of life (the newborn period). These facts point to an urgent need to strengthen efforts to improve maternal and child nutrition, provide prenatal care, safe childbirth and essential newborn care.
A range of policies make equitable progress more likely for the urban poor, including steps toward the progressive realization of universal health coverage to ensure that poor and marginalized groups have access to quality services that meets their needs.
Shams El Arifeen said, the public health nutrition programme is operated through the Institute of Public Health Nutrition (IPHN) in Bangladesh under the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare of Bangladesh.
The role of IPHN is to assist in formulating policy and strategy for nutrition related activities and programmes. It has also a role to conduct research, training and surveillance. In the current Health Nutrition Population Sector Development Programme (2011-2016), the National Nutrition Service has been designed to mainstream nutrition services into the existing health system.
To ensure collaboration among other nutrition relevant ministries, like agriculture and food, a multisectoral nutrition steering committee has been established with overall responsibility of supervision and monitoring of mainstreaming nutrition activities.
Despite IPHN acting as the coordinating agency, gaps are still evident within the policy implementation framework in terms of coordination and oversight in programme execution. This is largely due to a lack of coordination amongst agencies and organisations. Weak coordination has previously resulted in delays in execution, lack of clarity about responsibilities, lack of cross-learning and duplication of programmes and initiatives.
Bangladesh has achieved a fairly high coverage of vitamin A supplementation in under5 children and has been successful in eliminating night blindness. However, sub clinical Vitamin A Deficiency (VAD) in pregnant women has been reported in some studies and only one in five mothers receive postpartum vitamin A supplementation . Iodine deficiency disorder (IDD) is also a common problem of children and women of reproductive age in Bangladesh.
‘In Bangladesh, under nutrition is estimated to be the underlying cause of about 60 pc of childhood deaths’, said Shams El Arifeen ,Research Director for Transform Nutrition and Director of the Center for Child and Adolescent Health for the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research (ICDDR,B), Bangladesh.
ICDDR, B is the leading public health and nutrition research organization in Bangladesh. It is the main partner of Transform Bangladesh. Arifeen disclosed that Save the Children, World Food Programme (WFP) and DFID (Department for International Development), Bangladesh, also support several social protection programmes in Bangladesh to improve food security of vulnerable populations.
According to Arifeen, although there has been improvements in underweight prevalence, the current rate of reduction of malnutrition at 1.27 percent points per year means that we are unlikely to
achieve the nutrition target of Millennium Development Goal (MDG) 1 by 2015.
Not only in Bangladesh, malnutrition is now an underlying cause of nearly half of all under-5 deaths worldwide, and an increasing proportion of all child deaths occur in the first month of life (the newborn period). These facts point to an urgent need to strengthen efforts to improve maternal and child nutrition, provide prenatal care, safe childbirth and essential newborn care.
A range of policies make equitable progress more likely for the urban poor, including steps toward the progressive realization of universal health coverage to ensure that poor and marginalized groups have access to quality services that meets their needs.
Shams El Arifeen said, the public health nutrition programme is operated through the Institute of Public Health Nutrition (IPHN) in Bangladesh under the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare of Bangladesh.
The role of IPHN is to assist in formulating policy and strategy for nutrition related activities and programmes. It has also a role to conduct research, training and surveillance. In the current Health Nutrition Population Sector Development Programme (2011-2016), the National Nutrition Service has been designed to mainstream nutrition services into the existing health system.
To ensure collaboration among other nutrition relevant ministries, like agriculture and food, a multisectoral nutrition steering committee has been established with overall responsibility of supervision and monitoring of mainstreaming nutrition activities.
Despite IPHN acting as the coordinating agency, gaps are still evident within the policy implementation framework in terms of coordination and oversight in programme execution. This is largely due to a lack of coordination amongst agencies and organisations. Weak coordination has previously resulted in delays in execution, lack of clarity about responsibilities, lack of cross-learning and duplication of programmes and initiatives.
Bangladesh has achieved a fairly high coverage of vitamin A supplementation in under5 children and has been successful in eliminating night blindness. However, sub clinical Vitamin A Deficiency (VAD) in pregnant women has been reported in some studies and only one in five mothers receive postpartum vitamin A supplementation . Iodine deficiency disorder (IDD) is also a common problem of children and women of reproductive age in Bangladesh.
