Homemade Snacks Counter Starvation in Bangladesh

Inside a mud-and-thatch hut, a woman grinds fistfuls of toasted rice into powder. Adding molasses and lentils toasted with iodized salt, she packs the ingredients into plastic pouches.

These simple “pusti”--snacks--are saving lives in Bangladesh, a country where at least 500 children starve to death every day.

Each packet provides 150 calories and a rich dose of protein and vitamins A and C. That’s important in a country where half the 120 million people cannot afford enough to eat every day, the World Bank says.

Volunteers in the World Bank-financed feeding program give the snacks to families with young children, along with instructions on how to mix the ingredients with a little boiled water and oil and shape the resulting paste into tasty balls.

The balls, similar to the snacks that Bangladeshis often eat with tea or coffee, are much more likely to appeal to the local palate than the high-protein biscuits used to combat hunger in other parts of the world.

The snacks are meant to supplement the typical Bangladeshi’s diet of rice, lentils, fish and garden vegetables.

Since the pilot program began this year in Gabtali, an area of more than 200 villages 100 miles north of Dhaka, severe malnourishment has disappeared among children, said Mujibur Rahman, an official of a local aid agency helping run the government project.

At the beginning, project workers identified 2,712 malnourished children under age 2 in Gabtali. The children were each given two packets a day for three months--for very young children, more water is added to turn the ingredients into a porridge.

Malnourished pregnant women were also sought out and given four packets a day for nine months.

Two months after she conceived her first child, Monwara, a 16-year-old who like many Bangladeshis uses only one name, started suffering headaches, dizziness and loss of appetite.

Her family noticed nothing unusual, she said, but a neighbor trained as a volunteer with the feeding project was concerned. She took Monwara to one of the 177 nutrition centers in the area, where health workers put her on the extra 600 calories a day.

“I’m happy,” she says now, flashing a shy smile.

According to World Bank figures, Bangladesh has the highest infant mortality rate in South Asia--103 babies die for every 1,000 births. Malnutrition is responsible for about two-thirds of the deaths of children under 5.

At least 33% of Bangladeshi children under 6 are severely stunted, and an additional 31% are moderately stunted. More than 68% of the children are underweight and nearly 17% wasted, the highest of such bleak figures in South Asia.

The hungry are stunted in size and mental development, vulnerable to disease, incapable of productive work. The World Bank estimates that malnutrition will cost Bangladesh up to $22 billion in lost productivity over the next 10 years.

In 1995, the Health and Family Welfare Ministry announced plans for a six-year Bangladesh Integrated Nutrition Project at a cost of $67.3 million. Nearly all the money came in a loan from the World Bank.

The project began in Gabtali and five other areas and will start expanding to 34 more areas by the end of next year. Four years from now, when nutrition centers are established in all 40 initial areas, 10% of the country will be covered.

Expansion nationwide depends on the success of the pilot projects.

Community health workers visit families to spread the word about the feeding program and put up posters with pictures of malnourished children. They particularly look for young girls, who are often fed less in a country where boys are more prized.

The program also has a side benefit of offering village women a chance to earn extra money.

Women are formed into groups of 11 for every nutrition center to produce food packets, for which they are paid 2.30 takas each--about 2 cents.

Rameeza Khatton and a neighbor each earned about $2 in a recent two-week period, a significant sum in a country where the average per capita weekly pay is equal to $10.

“It did not take longer than three hours to earn this money,” Khatton said.