Bangladesh: The poorer the mother, the less likely she has access to skilled delivery support

Priyanka was 16 when pregnant with her first child. She carried the baby for nine months when she fell into a hole in the water pump next to her house.

“After I fell, I kept silent,” she recalls, an absent gaze on her face. “I didn’t know what to do. My belly turned hard. I was so frightened. In the end, my baby was dead.” Since then, she has birthed two healthy children.

“When my first baby died, I cried a lot and had a [lot of] trauma,” she remembers. “I am happier now with my healthy other children. Pollobi is in good health and gained good weight.”

Eating well

Today, Priyanka regularly visits sessions for mothers and pregnant women run by Joint Action for Nutrition Outcome (JANO), a CARE project funded by the European Union and Austrian Development Cooperation. There, she is connected to other mothers and gains important knowledge on health, nutrition, and precautions she should take when pregnant.

“After coming to the JANO sessions, I learned how important it is to take precautions. If my baby didn’t move, I immediately went to the doctor for a check-up,” Priyanka says. “I also learned a lot about what to eat during pregnancy. My husband is a day labourer, he works in other people’s fields. It is hard to support our livelihood. Without the community garden from JANO, we only ate rice and potatoes. Now we also eat vegetables and fruits daily.”

When mothers are anemic, their babies are born malnourished. Close to one-third of children under five are affected by stunting in Bangladesh, which has implications for longer-term cognitive development and their future as adults. Poverty hinders access to the knowledge and services necessary for early childhood development, and this is reflected in poor households’ higher rates of stunting, wasting, and mortality.

Asma’s son Araf is still slightly malnourished. His mother regularly goes to the community clinic for a health check-up. Through JANO, she learned that she has access to the clinic and how important monthly check-ups are.

“I learned a lot about nutrition,.” she says. “We now have access to nutrition service and I now know how to feed Araf correctly.”

Before the JANO project started in this village, access to nutritious food was difficult. Food prices are rising. Four years ago the price for 1 kilo of potatoes was 7-8 Takas (about $0.07), now it is more than 20 Takas ($0.19). Additionally, most families didn’t know how to grow their own vegetables. Now, the JANO community and household gardens provide nutritious vegetables and fruit.

“We changed our way of cooking,” Asma says. “Before we just cooked what we had without thinking about a balanced diet.”

When she birthed her first son, she had complications during his delivery. “I didn’t know what I know today,” she recalls. “With Araf I didn’t have any complications. I am very happy that he is healthy and growing stronger every day.”