Change of policy and strategy needed to eliminate malnutrition in women

Women are facing disparity and this discrimination is even more evident when it comes to nutrition. Nearly half of the pregnant women in the country suffer from anemia. Lack of women rights and malnutrition in women are threaded together. A change in the policy, strategy and programme is needed to turn the situation around.

Experts said this while discussing in a roundtable titled ‘Achieving gender equality in nutrition’ held at Prothom Alo office in the capital on Tuesday. Nutrition International and Prothom Alo co-organised the roundtable with the support of Global Affairs Canada.

During the roundtable, head of the reform commission on women affairs, Shirin Huq said that women rights activists towards the beginning of the 80s had started a campaign with a significant slogan,  ‘My body, my decision’.

The issue of ensuring nutrition for women and establishing women rights were included in this slogan. Mentioning that young women are coming to one stop crisis centre in the present time, she said that violence jeopardise both nutrition and rights.

International organisation, Nutrition International has carried out a sort of analysis of the gender-based discrimination in case of nutrition. Regional gender equality adviser of the organisation in Asia, Farhana Hafiz presented the findings of that analysis at the beginning of the discussion.

She said that nearly half of the pregnant women in the country suffer from Anemia and about 41 per cent mothers do not receive assistance of skilled health workers at the time of delivery.

As many as 16.7 per cent adolescent girls have said that boys are given priorities in the family. And, the practice to keep pregnant women confined in the house and providing them with less food are still prevalent, she added.

Taking part in the discussion, national professional officer on maternal and child nutrition for World Health Organization (WHO) Faria Shabnam said that the country in the last 30 years has fallen behind in some aspects of nutrition.

It’s not right to formulate a programme without the knowledge about the main reasons of the problem. One of the several main reasons behind the high rate of anemia in the country is thalassemia. So, programmes and projects must be taken based on complete information.

Suggesting that BRAC and Nutrition International can work together, the head of gender justice and diversity programme at BRAC, Masuma Billah said that it’s important to make women aware of the issue if they can meet their nutritional demand with the resources present at hand or to what extent the requirement can be met with that.

To what extent women are able to utilise the information of nutrition needs to be checked out as well, she said.

Taking part in the discussion, deputy country director of Nutrition International Asfia Azim said that in order to eliminate malnutrition in women, respective policies and strategies need to be analysed through gender lens.

For example she highlighted the lack of proper inclusion of the issue of gender in the national nutrition policy of 2015 where there are scope of misinterpretation. A united initiative has to be made by all to include the gender issue with significance in new nutrition policies and nutrition programmes, she added.

Health technical specialist for Global Affairs Canada, Momena Khatun said that gender is a vital issue for Canadian government. The government of Canada considers all the projects or programmes where gender activities are included on priority basis.

Citing about the findings of her research, gender expert Julia Ahmed said that adolescent girls are provided iron tablets from community clinics and they return home with those tablets. However, it came up in the research that those teenage girls do not take the iron tablets properly.

Women rights organisation, Naripokkho has long been carrying out researches on women health alongside their movement. Naripokkho president Geeta Das emphasised on area-based nutrition plan. Usually there are four types of people found in an area. The types are: people who are unaware and negligent, people who are unaware but compliant, people who are aware but negligent (these are dangerous) and people who are aware and compliant (these should be utilised), she added.

Project co-ordinator at the health system and population studies division of International Centre for Diarrheal Disease Research, Bangladesh (icddr,b) Sohana Shafique spoke about the importance of nutrition research. She said that there is less variety in women’s diet chart, there’s a lack of statistics or data on nutrition in the informal sector and the nutrition condition in cities is worse than that in villages. Plus there is a lack of women leadership when in case of policymaking, she remarked.

A representative of a government organisation was present in the discussion. She is the focal person on nutrition and research officer at the department of women affairs, Farhana Akhter. She said that issues like impact of climate change, malnutrition and food habits of adolescents need to be emphasised in the discussion of nutrition.

Working women leave their homes in the morning with a meager breakfast. When they return home after finishing their work, they do not or cannot manage a proper diet. Plus, sometimes there are no arrangements for proper meal at the workplace. This issue came up in the remarks of several speakers. Describing her experience from the Dhaka University campus, professor at the sociology department Salma Akhter said that proper meals are not available in many workplaces.

Towards the end of the discussion, country director of Nutrition International Saiqa Siraj said that a significant amount of allocation is given to gender and nutrition sectors.

However, the allocations are not spent properly due to various complications. As many as 127 social safety programmes are being implemented. There are scopes to include the issue of gender and nutrition in every single one of these programmes, she added.

Among others, policy advocacy, influence and campaign director at Plan International, Nishat Sultana, advocacy and communication manager at Merie Stopes Bangladesh Manzur Nahar, head of nutrition and health department at Hellen Keller International Ahsana Habib Shiuli and project director at Ayat Education Laila Karim also spoke during the two-hour long roundtable. Assistant editor of Prothom Alo Firoz Choudhury moderated the discussion.