NILIMA JAHAN

Mitu Akter had the scare of her life when her daughter Raisa began showing alarming symptoms: pale skin, and swelling in her belly, hands, and feet.

Tests revealed that the 15-month-old was severely malnourished, with dangerously low weight and height, anaemia, and nutritional oedema -- a condition caused by severe protein deficiency.

“The doctor told me that my daughter was suffering from acute nutritional deficiency,” said 23-year-old Mitu, a homemaker in Gazipur’s Kapasia upazila.

Herself frail and undernourished, Mitu, a mother of two, didn’t exclusively breastfeed Raisa. When Raisa turned six months, she began feeding her a mixture of rice powder and water -- a poor substitute for breast milk -- as the family could not afford nutritious food. Her seven-year-old elder daughter is also underweight.

Anaemic and weighing just 42kg during her second childbirth, Mitu never regained strength after marrying young and becoming a mother at an early age.

“I had little breast milk and no means to improve that,” said Mitu, whose husband sells jhalmuri (spicy puffed rice).

The family’s meals consist largely of rice and vegetables -- meat is rare, fish occasional, and milk almost absent.

Mitu’s story is far from unique. Her experience mirrors a broader crisis affecting millions of children suffering from malnutrition, primarily due to inadequate dietary intake, across Bangladesh.

This reality is reflected in statistics -- a 2024 UNICEF report shows that two in three children under five experience food poverty, and one in five consumes only one to two food groups daily, far below a minimum of five recommended by the World Health Organisation (WHO).

Child-feeding practices remain inadequate, with exclusive breastfeeding dropping to 53 percent in 2022 from 65 percent in 2017-18. Only 30 percent of children aged between six months and 23 months receive a minimum acceptable diet,

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