Amidst the paradoxical GDP growth trend and the widening wealth income gap between top and bottom classes, a national daily reported that every seventh person in the country is an undernourished or malnourished one due to their inability to intake enough food to meet dietary energy requirements. Bangladesh has got 24.4 million undernourished people, 15.1 percent of its total population, who are not having enough to meet their minimum daily diets 2200 kcal.
The economic stagnation, exorbitant price inflation of food staples, and unequal opportunity for all to secure basic amenities, and unbridled corruption have made the intake of nutritious food challenging for all classes – from the middle income class to the ultra poor population in the country. The retreat from the attainment of the millennium development goals and lagging behind the sustainable development goals would be a great impediment for overall socio-economic development.
The state of undernourishment means someone’s inability, lasting for at least one year, to acquire enough food to meet dietary energy requirements. This is an increase of 0.7 million over the past decade as the number of undernourished people was 23.7 million back in 2006. The statistics have been revealed by five UN organizations that cautioned against rising global hunger. According to the report, though the number of undernourished people increased in Bangladesh in past one decade, in terms of percentage of the total population the hunger incidence lessened marginally.
The report highlighted that currently, 15.1 percent of the Bangladeshi population is undernourished, down from 16.6 percent in 2006. Besides, the number of stunted children (under five-year of age) dropped from 7.7 million in 2006 to 5.5 million now while some 2.2 million under five-year children in Bangladesh are still wasted. It is also observed that a rising tendency of obesity among adult population as the number of obese people more than doubled from 1.4 million a decade back to over three million now.
It is a warning that after a steady decline for over a decade, global hunger is on the rise again, affecting 815 million people in 2016, or 11 per cent of the global population. The increase, 38 million more than the previous year, is largely due to the proliferation of violent conflicts and climate-related shocks.
This has set off alarm bells we cannot afford to ignore: we will not end hunger and all forms of malnutrition by 2030 unless we address all the factors that undermine food security and nutrition. Securing peaceful and inclusive societies is a necessary condition to that end. The firm commitment of the global leaders should be exemplified by bringing peace in the world and ours should navigate the SDGs attainment cautiously as the country is a textbook example of the climate change effect.
At national level, what is necessary is to rationalise such factors that widens income disparity among the people first and also to build up adequate food security so that all citizens at least get the minimum quantity of qualitative food to eat.
