WUNRN
Pakistan
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Women
and girls often get less to eat, as they are considered to need less food
than men and boys |
KOHAT, 5 April 2010 (IRIN) - “We girls
and our mothers eat last, after my four brothers, cousin and our fathers have
finished. Sometimes there is almost nothing left to eat - but we are used to
this,” Nasreena Bibi, 12, from northwestern
Her
family has been based since early 2009 with an uncle in the town of
Nasreena
and her mother help her aunt cook for the 14 people living in the four-room
house. But, like the other girls and women, she only eats a tiny fraction of
what she prepares.
“The
pattern is common in many homes. Women and girls get less to eat, as they are
considered to need less food than men,” said Aisha Bibi, 40, a female health
worker. “We try to educate people about the risks if expecting mothers, or
girls who will one day become mothers, do not get enough to eat.”
Some 12
percent of children screened in displaced families, and their hosts, suffer
moderate or acute malnutrition, with girls making up 58 percent of those
affected, according to a 2 April humanitarian update by the UN Office for the Coordination
of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
Health
worker Bibi said the “strained food situation” in the homes of hosts supporting
internally displaced persons (IDPs) for many months could be adding to
nutritional problems.
According
to official government data, the rate of malnutrition in conflict-affected NWFP
and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas is 13 percent.
UNICEF targets young
children, mothers
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However,
the problem is being addressed by humanitarian agencies and some improvements
appear to have been made.
“At the
start of 2009 the rate of acute malnutrition in the IDP camps was around 17
percent, but by the end of the year it was around 11 percent,” Muhammad Rafiq,
programme specialist at the Peshawar office of the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF),
said. “This improvement can be attributed to an effort made to provide general
food distribution, therapeutic and supplementary nutrition interventions, safe
water supply and enhanced health and sanitation services in the IDP camps and
affected communities.”
With
the collaboration of the department of health and NGO partners, UNICEF is
focusing, through community-based programmes, on addressing acute malnutrition
in children under five and among pregnant and lactating women.
“The
programme is also addressing micronutrient malnutrition through the provision
of multiple micronutrient sprinkles to children - and tablets to pregnant women
and feeding mothers - ensuring de-worming, and through vitamin A
supplementation,” Rafiq said.
Some
6,179 pregnant or lactating women and 15,036 children are enrolled in a
supplementary feeding programme run by humanitarian agencies, according to OCHA.
“I know
I need to eat well. Doctors I saw at the Jalozai Camp in Nowshera, where we
lived for a short time, told me I needed better food. But how can we get it?
Whenever we have an egg or two at hand I cook them for my husband, because he
must do hard work as a labourer,” said Haseeba Bibi, 35, an IDP from the
Orakzai Agency who recently gave birth to her third child. She is currently
based with a host family just outside Kohat.
“We are
too poor to care for our welfare, and people at home, who stayed on in the
conflict zone, are even worse off,” she said.
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