Speakers at a seminar on Tuesday laid emphasis on improving nutrition status of both mothers and children through raising mass awareness among the common people. In order to build a healthy nation, people should consume nutritious food alongside maintaining healthy lifestyle to keep away different diseases, they observed.The speakers made the observations at the seminar entitled “Nutrition Status in Kurigram District and Doings” at the conference room of Kurigram Deputy Commissioner (DC).
Bangladesh Institute of Research and Training on Applied Nutrition (BIRTAN), regional office Pirganj, Rangpur financed by European Union (EU) organised the seminar incorporation with SANGO project.
The speakers turned out that Kurigram suffers from nutrition risk. The nutrition threat has largely been increased due to being a char based and riverine district. Early marriage is one of the major causes behind this, he identified.
In a case study, it is found that 41% child bearing mothers receive health service less than one time during pregnancy which is less than the national rate. There are about 57254 childbearing mothers in the district.
Besides, the childbearing mothers consume less diversified foods essential for both mothers and children at this period. This leads to the underweight child birth and it is largely evident in a case study recently among 23909 children of 5 years old in the district.
Sultana Pervin, deputy commissioner (DC) of Kurigram, addressed the seminar as the chief guest and Dr Habibur Rahman civil surgeon Kurigrm (CS), Pratick Patel deputy project manager SONGO project were present at the event as special guest while Dr Sadequl Islam senior scientific officer BIRTAN regional office presided over the seminar.
Earlier, a keynote paper on the subject was presented by Dr Maudud Hossain adviser CCTN, National Nutrition Service Dhaka.
Health experts identified that limited dietary diversity and poor feeding practices are causes behind malnutrition among infant and young children of the country.
They further emphasized that creating social awareness among the people particularly among the rural ones about nutrition and nutritious food is very imperative. If people become aware, they could eat the nutrition food needed to keep their body fit and keep themselves away from different diseases.
Same dietary continuously contributes to loss testing ability of children. Most of the people feed their children same dietary everyday because they do not know how to prepare nutritious diets, they added.
In this regard, leaf lets on preparing nutritious diets from common food available in hands were distributed among the participants.
Health experts, representatives of both government and non government organizations among others also addressed the seminar.
Deputy Commissioner Sultana Pervin in her speeches urged representatives and officials of both government and non government organizations to motivate the people from urban to grass root level about nutrition to attain the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the government by 2030.