A survey crucial to health of women, children

With relentless degradation of the environment, thanks to the unceasing developmental activities along with rapid urbanisation, working men, women and their children are increasingly getting exposed to hazardous heavy metals like lead, chromium, mercury, cadmium, etc. The damage that heavy metals like lead can cause particularly to men includes alteration of their hormones and sperm health, leading to reduction of fertility. If women before or during their pregnancy are exposed to those metals by way of touching or inhaling dust particles containing those at workplaces, they run the risk of miscarriage, stillbirth and babies with birth defects. Also, babies drinking breast milk of victim mothers can harm their brain development. Similarly, taking food or water with high concentration of chromium, can cause irritation to the lining of stomach and intestine as well as damage to male reproductive system. Cadmium, on the other hand, can be damaging to kidney. But to assess the gravity of the risk from such metals to public health, especially to that of children and women, it is necessary to conduct an in-depth study on the issue.
The good news is that the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS), in collaboration with the United Nations Children's Fund (Unicef) has officially announced the launch of a household survey styled Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS) to this effect. This is a kind of survey that collects essential data on children and women to guide the authorities concerned in formulating policies and programmes. However, the BBS and Unicef have been doing such multiple-indicator surveys for decades. But this is for the first time that the survey (MICS) has included the new feature of collecting data on blood lead levels (BLL), other heavy metals, micronutrients and anaemia from the respondents. The need for such a survey has arisen because one in every three deaths among under-five children attributable to the environmental factors is preventable if addressed duly. As reported, the upcoming MICS will involve around 200 indicators relating to health, nutrition, water, sanitation, education and child protection. While appreciating and welcoming the move to collect the vital data from the soon-to-start MICS, it would be important to maintain the quality of the data.
The question arises because failure of umpteen past government policies on a host of issues ranging from economy to health can be traced back to a large extent to the poor quality of the data on which those policies were based. That is why this MICS, which is gong to be the seventh round of similar such surveys conducted so far, is expected to be free from any error or bias that may prejudice the final result. Notably, the outcome of this survey will be crucial to monitoring progress towards achieving the UN's Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030 as well as evaluating the country's 8th Five Year Plan 2020-25.
It is heartening to learn that with a view to maintaining data quality, the BBS and icddr,b (International Centre for Diarrheal Disease Research) will analyse identical samples to compare results before publishing. The wealth of data obtained from such surveys carried out during the past three decades has reportedly proved to be of immense help towards achieving children's rights as well as for the work developed by the government, policymakers, the Unicef and partners. The findings of the proposed survey by the BBS and Unicef on critical child and women health issues will hopefully be a game changer.