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IMMUNITY AND NUTRITION

Let's make habit of hand washing mandatory

Pankaj Karmakar
DESPITE massive campaign, hand washing with soap at five critical times a day is staying far behind from reaching its expected level as the people especially in rural areas do not continue the practice regularly.
At present, only 0.6 percent people wash hands with soap before preparing food, 3.9 percent before serving food, 1.9 percent before eating, 1.0 percent after eating, 1.8 percent before feeding a child, 24 percent after cleaning child anus, 24 percent after defecation, 6.5 percent after returning home and 31 percent after cleaning or handling cow dung.
A study by the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh (ICDDR.B) that was published in May last year showed the statistics.
The five key moments for hand washing in a day are — after defecation, after handling child faeces or cleaning a child who has defecated,
before preparing food, before feeding a child and before taking food.
In rural lifestyle, people both male and female have to contribute to their family's income-generating activities through dealing with domestic animals, cow dung and other sorts of garbage.
They need to wash their hands with soap at least 10 to 15 times a day to protect themselves and their children from germs and to keep a sound family health.
The times include before serving food, after eating, after returning home, after cleaning cow dung or other garbage and outside compound, say experts.
Some study found that it is difficult to afford a soap for a extreme poor family, while low-income people use soap miserly to preserve money for food and other essentials.
"It costs Tk 20 to Tk 25 to buy a soap. I along with my family members use soap while taking bath only," said Abul Kashem, a rickshaw
puller of the city's Shahbagh area.
Hand washing practice is closely related with different childhood diseases especially diarrhoea. Several study findings prove that hand washing practice is particularly important for improving child health.
Unsafe water, poor sanitation and unhygienic living conditions claim many lives each year an estimated 1.2 million children die from diarrhoea alone across the world, said a Unicef report.
Among many factors, feeding children in unhygienic way is one of the major contributors to malnutri-
tion in infancy and causes diarrhoea and other diseases, said health experts.
Around half of the children and one-third of the women of the country suffer from malnutrition, said a paper that was personated in a seminar titled "Food and Nutrition Security in Bangladesh," jointly organised by USAID and ICDDR.B in an auditorium of ICDDR.B on October 25 last year.
Along with unhygienic feeding process, inappropriate feeding practices have been identified as major causes of malnutrition in young children in developing countries
including Bangladesh.
Complementary feeding means that children should be provided extra food along with breast feeding. This practice should start from month six of a child's age and continue up to the age of 24 months.
Dr Tahmeed Ahmed, Director, Centre for Nutrition and Food Security, ICDDR.B, said only 21 percent children in Bangladesh take proper complementary food.
Poverty and lack of knowledge are the main reasons for not providing adequate complementary food to children, said Dr. Tahmeed.
Varieties in food items like vegeta-
ble, animal protein should be given to children at least three to four times in a day, he added.
Due to poverty, only 20 percent of children can take egg, 12 percent can eat meat and 40 percent gets fish daily, he said, adding, "We need to promote animal source of protein to meet the optimum level of protein for children."
Dr. Tahmeed also recommended setting up an industry at the coastal area for processing the sea fish into dry fish because those contain huge amount of protein.
The dry fish full of protein should be converted into powder and distributed among the people to meet the demand of protein. This can be a significant intervention for reducing the rate of malnutrition among children, he said.
The next issue of Promoting ’ Chid Rights will be published 1 on June 3,2012. Readers are welcome to send their feedback by e-mail to: shahu_madan@yahoo.com