95 slum children out of 1,000 die under age 5
Says Unicef report
Around 95 children out of every 1,000 born in the country's slums die before the age of five. The figure is 48 for every 1,000 births in the country, says a Unicef report.
Bangladesh ranks 61st in the under-five mortality rate list of 190 countries, says the report, “The state of the world's children 2012: Children in an urban world”.
However, the report contains no comprehensive data on the country's slum dwellers, thought to number around 41.7 million, 28 percent of the population, and slum children who are considered as the most vulnerable in society.
Rapid urbanisation leaves millions of urban slum children excluded from and deprived of necessary services, said a Unicef official while launching the report at Jatiya Press Club in the city yesterday.
For example only 18 percent of slum children attended secondary school compared to 53 percent of children in urban areas and 48 percent in rural areas, said the report.
Around 22 to 50 percent of the 2.5 million people forced into labour after being trafficked are children. In Bangladesh, 22 percent of infants are born underweight, it said.
Though HIV infection was seen to have decreased in a survey among 60 countries, it rose by more than 25 percent in Bangladesh and six other countries, it added.
Addressing the programme, Unicef Bangladesh country representative Pascal Villeneuve said, “Children in slums and deprived neighborhoods are often invisible to decision makers and lost in a hazy world of statistical averages that conceal grave inequalities.”
Noted economist Prof Abul Barkat said the number of slum dwellers is increasing day by day in the name of urbanisation in the country.
Planning Secretary Bhuiyan Shafiqul Islam stressed the need for effective initiatives on the basis of the report's data to end discrimination on and deprivation of slum children.
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