Disparities remain despite progress in Bangladesh

Bangladesh has made big strides in some areas towards ensuring well-being of women and children but large disparities in terms of wealth and access to education remain among different regions.

There has been progress in improving completion rate of primary education and ensuring better access to drinking water but areas such as children's health, early marriage and access to sanitation are still marked by disparities, revealed a Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) survey.

Two out of five children under the age of five are stunted and three in every 10 are underweight, according to the study.

52.8 percent children from the poorest families suffer malnourishment compared to 27 percent from the richest group.

"Barisal division has the highest proportion of stunted children while Khulna has the lowest," said BBS Deputy Director Dipankar Roy presenting the key findings of the Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS) 2012-13 at Bangabandhu International Conference Centre in the capital.

Planning Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal, State Minister for Finance and Planning MA Mannan and Unicef Representative in Bangladesh Edouard Beigbeder were, among others, present at the programme.

Beigbeder said, "The results clearly show remarkable progress made in Bangladesh over the last few years in improving conditions for children, but it also highlights important disparities that need to be addressed."

Emphasising the importance of education, the planning minister said the government has taken various development programmes to reduce disparities.

With support from Unicef, the BBS survey was carried out in 64 districts from December 2012 to April 2013, based on data collected from 51,895 households and covering a total of 79 social indicators, of which 16 are Millennium Development Goal indicators.

In its survey, the BBS finds that early initiation of breastfeeding is still at a low rate.

Early breastfeeding is more common in home births than those at public and private healthcare facilities, and it is higher among poorest households at 63 percent than richest ones at 48 percent, says the study.

According to the survey, 43.5 percent births are attended by skilled health professionals in the country. However, mothers from poorest households get the services in only 26.5 percent cases compared to 72.8 percent of mothers from richest households. Khulna division has the highest rate of providing skilled birth attendants while Sylhet has the lowest.

On education, the study finds that net attendance of primary school-going kids has dropped among both boys and girls between the year 2006 and 2012-13. But completion rate of primary education has risen for both the sexes in the same period.

However, one in four kids still remains out of primary schools and the proportion is higher among boys than girls, according to the study.

More than half of the women aged between 20-24 years get married before the age of 18 years and some 18 percent before 15 years.

24.8 percent of the population have drinking water with arsenic above the World Health Organisation guideline value of 10 parts per billion (ppb) and 12.4 percent of the population have drinking water that exceeds the Bangladesh Standard of 50 ppb, the study says.

More than half of the source water in Sylhet division is contaminated with arsenic. Drinking water in Barisal division has the lowest amount of arsenic, it points out.

It also finds that 41.7 percent of the population have source water with detectable Escherichia coli or E. coli bacteria although many countries including Bangladesh have set a standard that no E. coli should be found in a 100 ml sample of drinking water.

The BBS survey shows that there has been progress in access to improved sanitation from 39 percent in 2006 to 77 percent in 2013. The rate of open defecation has also reduced in the same period.

However, significant differences lie in the use of improved sanitation facilities between rich and poor households, according to the survey.