Checking stunted growth

Healthy population is a precious wealth for any country. Stunted physical growth of children is certain to impact adversely the efforts for sustained economic development as the future workforce will be too malnourished to be of any productive use. Health budget will swell; productivity will drop sharply. It is still a stark reality that malnutrition that causes stunted growth remains a major problem in Bangladesh. Stunted growth is a multi-dimensional problem that goes beyond the issue of food production. Improving food security, tackling malnutrition, reducing disparities in income and education, reducing gender inequities and improving protection against inevitable shocks are the key elements of any strategy to help combat malnutrition.

Against such a scenario, the results of a survey by the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS), the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the United Nations World Food Programme (UNWFP) are sure to trigger concerns among the policymakers in the country. Hundreds of thousands of children are now growing physically stunted. It means their productivity as under-nourished ones will impede the process of development, if not right now but in the not-too-distant future. As the nutritional aspect of food intake is vital for checking stunting, it is rather disheartening to note that the country is yet to focus adequately on milk production as one important part of its overall agriculture policy. Policymakers are more interested in rice production so that the urban and the rural poor remain quiet. But if nutritional security has to be at the centre of policy-thinking, then there is no option but to rethink about, or change the entire attitude towards, agricultural policy. Even if income rises at the individual level, child malnutrition will not disappear without properly addressing the micro-nutrient issue.

Hence there is a strong need for a big policy shift to prioritise nutritional security. About four out of ten children under five, as the findings of the survey indicate, are chronically undernourished. They are too short for their age, a condition known as stunting. The survey estimated the cost of countrywide under-nutrition at more than Tk 70 billion in terms of lost productivity every year and even more in health care costs. Nutritional needs, as medical exporters say, have to be met during the first 1,000 days as one can not make up for it later. After that, physical growth and cognitive development is affected and then the child will be disadvantaged for the rest of its life. Despite economic growth performance at 5.5 per cent or a little above on an annual average basis in last one decade or more, the nutritional status of Bangladeshi women and children has remained at a critically low level. This will hinder progress towards achieving the millennium development targets (MDGs) about lowering maternal and child mortality rates and alleviating poverty.

Malnutrition and high rate of childhood stunting in the country could be reduced significantly if nutrition education would have been incorporated in different social safety net programmes (SSNPs) and implemented successfully. Although Bangladesh spends quite a substantial amount of public resources through its annual national budget to run different social safety net programmes, the target of reducing malnutrition significantly has not been achieved yet. Mere transfer of food or cash under the SSNPs would not make much difference, in terms of improving people's nutrition level, unless these are tagged with communication concerning nutrition behaviour-change. Incidence of malnutrition and stunting, as experts have figured out, could then be reduced four times faster.