73pc people in Bangladesh cannot afford healthy food: UN

One has to spend Tk 276 daily for a healthy diet here in Bangladesh. But unfortunately, 73 per cent of the total population cannot afford such a diet.

The scenario was revealed in a global report prepared by five bodies of the United Nations earlier this week.

The report – The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World -- is an annual flagship publication jointly prepared by Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), UNICEF, World Food Program (WFP), and World Health Organisation (WHO). It contains information from almost all the member states of the United Nations.

According to the report, Nepal lags behind all South Asian nations in the context of affordability to buy healthy food. Pakistan secured the second last position while India fared better than Bangladesh and Pakistan. Sri Lanka and Bhutan are in a good condition.

The challenges in eradicating hunger, ensuring food security and eliminating all forms of malnutrition are growing, the report said. The Covid-19 pandemic has exposed the prevailing social inequalities as well as the weakness and fragility of the global agricultural food system.

The pandemic has increased global hunger and food insecurity. Child malnutrition remained a major concern despite developments in many fronts. Besides, anaemia in mothers and obesity in adults have reached an alarming peak.

The report gave details of healthy food, advocating a balanced diet of different categories, in addition to drinking clean water.

The number of people suffering from food insecurity has increased significantly in Bangladesh. Some 50.4 million people were suffering from moderate to severe food insecurity in 2014-16, but the figure jumped to 52.3 million within the next three years in 2019-2021.

It implies that some 32 per cent of the total population here faced food insecurity.

That means, some 68 per cent people have no food insecurity, but still a large portion of them do not have a healthy diet or cannot afford it.

The report estimated the price of a healthy diet at Tk 272.16 daily in 2019, which was not affordable for 119.8 million people. In 2020, this cost rose to Tk 275.76 while the number of while the number of people incapable of affording this increased to 121.1 billion, which is 73.5 per cent of the total population.

Food insecurity and inability to have a healthy diet impacted human health hard and some 11.4 per cent people are suffering from malnutrition in Bangladesh. The rate was 14.2 per cent one and a half decades ago.

According to the report, 10 per cent of children aged below 5 years suffer from wasting due to severe malnutrition while 30 per cent children remain stunted.

On the flip side, more than 2 per cent of children are overweight. Different data on child nutrition showed that the prevalence of wasting and stunting is waning day by day while obesity is increasing abnormally among children.

Obesity has been increasing among adults too as the rate of adults with obesity, which was 2.8 per cent of the total population, rose to 3.6 per cent in 2016.

The report also disclosed that the nutrition situation deteriorated among the women. In 2012, some 36 per cent of women aged from 15 to 49 years were suffering from anaemia. The rate was supposed to decline in course of time, but the reality is just the opposite as the disease was reported among 37 per cent women of the age group in 2019.

Breastfeeding is ideal for the newborn. The number of babies having only breast milk in the first six months was 1.9 million in 2012, but the situation deteriorated slightly as the figure declined to 1.8 million in 2020.

In this regard, the line director of the National Nutrition Services, Mustafizur Rahman, told Prothom Alo that Bangladesh witnessed remarkable progress in nutrition. The Covid-19 pandemic has had a negative impact on global food security and nutrition. The Ukraine-Russia war could make the situation more critical and Bangladesh would also take a hit.

The global nutrition report said it is a right of all to get a safe and nutritious diet. Investment in healthy and sustainable agro-food means investing for the next generation. The five UN bodies are ready to extend cooperation to the governments in this regard.

Prof Syed Abdul Hamid of Dhaka University's Institute of Health Economics said the country's agriculture has improved a lot, but many farmers, at the same time, are showing more interest in growing other agricultural items than the country’s staple crops.

Besides, the agricultural sector is losing about 70,000 hectares of cropland every year. In addition, the Covid-19 pandemic and the recent war have affected food imports hard. These things have a combined effect on food security and nutrition.