RURAL BANGLADESH - PreventionWeb

Socio-Economic Profiles of WFP Operational Areas and Beneficiaries
perceived as offering poor quality services, are not adequately utilized. NGOs and the
private sector are providing essential supplemental health services, especially to mothers and
children. The challenge has been to broaden the service base, particularly aimed at targeting
the ultra poor, who do not access health care services and have largely been bypassed in the
health care improvements and health outcomes described above (Report on Country Fact
File on Maternal, Newborn, and Child Health Situation in Bangladesh, 2005).
Food Security: Although Bangladesh has not experienced widespread famine in recent
years, a substantial proportion of Bangladesh households continue to experience extreme
forms of chronic as well as transitory food insecurity (Sen & Hulme, 2004). Eight percent of
households indicate seasonal distress, reporting consumption of two meals a day for “some
months of the year”. Fifteen percent of rural households have adequate rice intake but also
protein and nutrient intake deficiencies; and 11% report adequate food intake but at the
expense of deficiencies in meeting other basic needs (Sen & Hulme, 2004). Dietary
diversity remains generally poor; nutritional surveys consistently highlight a high
concentration of rice and relatively little consumption of protein. Food insecurity is marked
by a variety of micronutrient deficiencies (Rashid, 2004).
A variety of factors contribute to the food insecurity experienced by the poor in Bangladesh,
including:
♦ Family characteristics such as large family size, old age (along with isolation from
other family members), female household heads, and the disability of a prime income
earner;
♦ Ill health of a family member (the gap between the poor and non-poor is pronounced
for chronic illness). Health-related shocks burden the extreme poor relative than for
the non-poor;
♦ Work and wage related factors have an important impact on food security,
particularly seasonal unemployment and labour exploitation workplace;
♦ Key social, institutional, and environmental factors that contribute to increased food
insecurity include lack of access to common property, exclusion from social security
factors, and the financial strain caused by loan repayment.
♦ Natural calamities often disrupt markets causing the poor to lose their sources of
income, in addition to damaging assets and resulting in immediate food shortages,
forcing poor households to dispose of assets in order to secure food (Hossain, 2003).
The diet of the poor is a direct reflection of their current economic status. Hossain (2003)
found that poor households living in remote villages consume fewer meals than those of
more central villages. He also found that chronic extreme poor households generally eat two
meals a day while the transient poor eat three meals more frequently. The poor also change
their eating habits – in terms of quality and quantity of food as well as frequency of meals –
to cope with food shortages. In some cases, the poor eat alternative (famine or wild) foods
that are not part of their regular diet to supplement their food intake during periods of
scarcity (TANGO, 2004).
There is also an important spatial dimension to poverty, vulnerability to shocks and food
insecurity in Bangladesh. Shocks and natural or unnatural events have a disproportionate
effect on people in marginal, risk-prone, areas. There is also a spatial dimension to chronic
food insecurity. The 1996 Basic Needs Survey indicated that although the national average
energy intake of 2,158 Kcal was slightly (1.7%) higher than the minimum requirement, there
20