Govt provides 19,000 Rajshahi slum families with healthcare

Around 19,000 poor and extremely poor families living in slums in Rajshahi city have been receiving health and nutritional support under the Urban Partnership for Poverty Reduction Project (UPPRP) to combat malnutrition.

The three-year scheme started in October 2012 at a cost of Tk 40.12 crore in order to supplement national efforts to prevent maternal and infant deaths.

Ajahar Ali, chief executive officer of Rajshahi City Corporation, said the programme is a component of the just concluded UPPRP.     

LGED in association with UNDP and with financial support and technical support from UKaid and UNHabitat implemented the UPPRP.

The nutrition component intends to improve the nutritional status of children, pregnant and breastfeeding women and adolescent girls of the project's targeted households as the highest rate of malnutrition has been found among children living in slums of the city.

Mahbubul Alam, town manager of UPPRP, said the component has arranged necessary counselling for 250 pregnant women and 1,280 breast feeding mothers, group meetings for 3,500 adolescents and courtyard meetings for 46,000 family members and 2,000 children discussing and highlighting significance of the aforesaid issues.

Referring to various research findings, he mentioned that prevalence of malnutrition in slum areas is among the highest in the city. Many of children and women suffer from one or more forms of malnutrition, including low birth weight, stunting, underweight, vitamin A deficiency, iodine deficiency disorder and anaemia.

To address the problems, the target groups received direct nutrition and its related products like 515,460 Iron and Folic Acid tablets, 100,800 de-worming tablets and 40,515 doses of suspension and 72,174 packets of micronutrient powder.

As schoolboys and shcoolgirls are most vulnerable to worm infection, the nutrition project is putting emphasis on making them aware about hygiene and use of sanitary latrine together with proper hand washing before taking every meal.