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A total of 73.5 per cent of people are unable to afford healthy food in Bangladesh as one needs to spend $3.064 for getting required nutrition per day, according to a joint report launched by five organisations of the United Nations.
Among the eight Southern Asian countries, the report found Bangladesh the third most vulnerable country in terms of taking nutritious foods.
The global report titled ‘The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2022’ was jointly prepared by the Food and Agriculture Organization, the International Fund for Agricultural Development, the United Nations Children’s Fund, the World Food Programme and the World Health Organization.
It was published on July 7 for repurposing food and agricultural policies to make healthy diets more affordable.
In Southern Asia, the percentage of people unable to take healthy food in Bhutan is 50, India 70, Iran 22.1, Maldives 1.1, Nepal 83.3, Pakistan 81.2 and Sri Lanka 45.3, said the report that covered all UN members.
A total of 11.98 crore people in Bangladesh could not afford a healthy diet in 2019 and the number rose to 12.11 crore in 2020, showing a rising trend of people in this category.
The challenges to ending hunger, food insecurity and all forms of malnutrition keep growing as the number of people who could not afford a healthy diet in 2020 increased globally and in every region in the world, said the report.
Almost 3.1 billion people across the globe could not afford a healthy diet in 2020. This is 112 million more than in 2019, reflecting the inflation in consumer food prices stemming from the economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and the measures put in place to contain it, according to the report.
The increase was mainly driven by Asia, where 78 million more people were unable to afford this diet in 2020, followed by Africa (25 million more people), while Latin America and the Caribbean and Northern America and Europe had 8 and 1 million more people, respectively.
‘The Covid-19 pandemic has further highlighted the fragilities in our agrifood systems and the inequalities in societies, driving further increases in world hunger and severe food insecurity,’ the report added.
This number could even be greater once data are available to account for income losses in 2020.
The ongoing war in Ukraine is disrupting supply chains and further affecting prices of grain, fertilizer and energy.
In the first half of 2022, it resulted in further food price increases. At the same time, more frequent and severe extreme climate events are disrupting supply chains, especially in low-income countries, observed the report.
This report repeatedly highlights the intensification of these major drivers of food insecurity and malnutrition: conflict, climate extremes and economic shocks combined with growing inequalities.
Former World Bank Dhaka office chief economist Zahid Hussain told New Age that the major reasons behind people being unable to get healthy food was financial constraints due to the income loss during the Covid-19 pandemic, rising inequalities in society and inflation.
‘The government had increased the duty on imported fruits to tackle the foreign exchange reserve resulting in the increase in the price. Poor and low-income people are unable to take food, considered as one of the nutritious food,’ he added.
He also blamed the change in food habits among the younger generation, dependency on commercial food and the use of fertiliser to increase the productivity of crops at the expense of quality for people taking less nutritious food.
Dhaka University Institute of Nutrition and Food Science professor Md Saidul Arefin said that if one failed to maintain a healthy diet, he or she would suffer from malnutrition in the coming days.
‘Many people will suffer from heart, kidney and cancer diseases due to lack of healthy food intake,’ he said.
He mentioned that if a woman was unable to afford nutritious food during the pregnancy period, it would create an adverse impact on her and the baby’s efficiency during youth age.
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