Rising food prices causing millions of Bangladesh children go hungry

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Nizam Ahmed
One-third of Bangladesh's millions of children are feared to go half-fed as prices of food continue to rise despite higher production, aid workers said on Friday.
Despite production of more than 34 million tonnes of rice and some 1.0 million tonnes of wheat in 2011, food prices are now rising gradually at the retail level -- after staying stable for a certain period of time -- due to depreciation of Taka, and rising transport costs, officials of World Food Programme told the FE.
Besides cereal, meat, fish, poultry, eggs etc., were also on rise, forcing millions of families to slash their daily food lists in Bangladesh, charity workers said.
As a dozen of chicken eggs are now sold almost at Tk 100, many school children even among the solvent families have started missing eggs from their food menu.
According to a recent report by the charity organisation, Save the Children, one young child in four around the world including Bangladesh is too malnourished to grow properly.
There are 170 million children aged under five -whose development has been stunted by malnutrition because of lack of food for them and their breastfeeding mothers, and the situation is getting significantly worse, according to the research by the charity, Save the Children.
"In Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, Peru and Nigeria -- countries which are the home of half of the world's stunted children -- recent rises in global food prices are forcing the parents of malnourished children to cut back on food and pull children out of school to work," said the report.
"If no concerted action is taken, half a billion children will be physically and mentally stunted over the next 15 years," Justin Forsyth, the charity's chief executive, warned in a statement.
According to the report of the Save the Children, a lot of families cannot afford milk and meat. Meat and milk are a luxury that poor families that want to eat food for the sake of survival, cannot even think of.
In any case even among the not-so-poor, meat is not always there, as it is very expensive, and it is not always easy to spare the money for it. In the case of milk, now with the sachet ones, some may afford to buy once in a while.