Floods are an annual feature in Bangladesh. There is a lot of damage to life and property. Roads and rail lines are washed away. Crops are destroyed. Homes are washed away.
Fertile top soil is eroded which decreases yield of land. In other words everyone suffers.
But, one segment of the population suffers the most- children. After every bout of floods the number of malnourished children increases. Why is that?
Parveen Chowdhury, director of Bangladesh’s Institute of Public Health and Nutrition says,
Children suffer from diarrhea, respiratory tract infection, pneumonia, conjunctivitis and viral fever. Iodine, iron and vitamin-A deficiencies are endemic in some hard-to-reach pockets. Deficiency of these micronutrients causes severe malnutrition that makes children susceptible to impaired intellect, night blindness and host of other health disorders.
The children of the country face other problems like,
* Efforts to give children nutritional supplements, especially vitamin A, in flood affected areas are impeded because of the difficulty in reaching these children, as the roads are either under water or washed away.
* Scarcity of adequate medical facility is another factor which aggravates matters. There is a lack of adequate number of hospital beds in the country. As a result the hospitals are over crowded, leading to poor or no treatment
* The mal-nutrition problem increases after the flood recedes. The parents of the underfed child are without work and cannot feed their children. Studies have indicated that after floods diarrhea is a major problem and the chief cause of malnourishment of children.
* To make matters worse inflation in Bangladesh is at an alarming 17 percent. Costlier food means no or little food for children, worsening the problem of malnutrition.
