�Nutrition, education top priorities of govt�

Bangladesh Ambassador to USA Mohammad Ziauddin has said nutrition and education are the two topmost issues on the priority list of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to build a healthy and educated nation, reports BSS. “Malnutrition is the largest single contributor to physical and mental underdevelopment and diseases, including blindness,” he told an international conference on “Child Right and Sight” at the Yale University in Connecticut, according to a message received here from Bangladesh embassy in Washington.
He said a billion hungry and undernourished children go to bed every night while 3.5 million die annually worldwide and one in four suffers from stunted growth. He deplored that South Asia has the highest child malnutrition in the world.
The Ambassador said nutrition means access to food to which every child has an inherent right. A child’s right to nutrition means that the nation must be food secured. He said Bangladesh achieved the status of food security, which was recognized by FAO in 1998 with its prestigious Ceres Award. The nutrition intake has also increased with women’s equal participation in nation building, own earnings and empowerment.
Ziauddin said increased nutrition intake has been helped by other measures like delaying girl marriages to 18 years, care of babies for the first 1000 days of life, breast feeding of infants till six months, polio elimination, availability of vitamin A to deter blindness, iron, folic acid supplements and salt iodization to reduce iodine deficiency.
These are made available through 16,500 community clinics across Bangladesh, he added. The Ambassador told the conference that these measures of the government have reduced infant mortality to 33 per 1000 which earned Bangladesh the UN MDG Award for Infant mortality.

�Nutrition, education top priorities of govt�

Bangladesh Ambassador to USA Mohammad Ziauddin has said nutrition and education are the two topmost issues on the priority list of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to build a healthy and educated nation, reports BSS. Malnutrition is the largest single contributor to physical and mental underdevelopment and diseases, including blindness, he told an international conference on Child Right and Sight at the Yale University in Connecticut, according to a message received here from Bangladesh embassy in Washington. He said a billion hungry and undernourished children go to bed every night while 3.5 million die annually worldwide and one in four suffers from stunted growth. He deplored that South Asia has the highest child malnutrition in the world. The Ambassador said nutrition means access to food to which every child has an inherent right. A childs right to nutrition means that the nation must be food secured. He said Bangladesh achieved the status of food security, which was recognized by FAO in 1998 with its prestigious Ceres Award. The nutrition intake has also increased with womens equal participation in nation building, own earnings and empowerment. Ziauddin said increased nutrition intake has been helped by other measures like delaying girl marriages to 18 years, care of babies for the first 1000 days of life, breast feeding of infants till six months, polio elimination, availability of vitamin A to deter blindness, iron, folic acid supplements and salt iodization to reduce iodine deficiency. These are made available through 16,500 community clinics across Bangladesh, he added. The Ambassador told the conference that these measures of the government have reduced infant mortality to 33 per 1000 which earned Bangladesh the UN MDG Award for Infant mortality.