Meeting Millennium Development Goals
Aisha goes to school and wants to be a lawyer when she grows up
As part of a series assessing whether Bangladesh is on track to meet the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015, the BBC’s Alastair Lawson visits a slum in the capital, Dhaka, to find out why the country has made such remarkable progress on getting children into primary education.
Aisha, nine, is part of the Bangladesh success story when it comes to primary education.
She is a resident of the Mogh Bazaar slum in central Dhaka – and in contrast to other children in this series – she is one of the country’s 16.4 million primary school children aged between six and 10.
So why is she at school – learning English, history, Bengali and maths – when an estimated 3.3 million of her contemporaries across the country work full or part time?
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 Poor people rely on small children as breadwinners so they literally cannot afford to send them to school  Shumata Begum, teacher
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“I come here because my parents say it is important for me to get an education if I am to do well in life,” she says.
“I want to be a lawyer when I grow up because I have seen so many people go to prison unjustly and I would like to help free them.
“I enjoy it here and have many friends. I want to be able to read and write when I am older. My mother says it will help me to get a better job.”
‘Food incentives’
Aisha’s teacher, Shumata, says that in poorer parts of urban Bangladesh it is a constant battle to persuade parents to send their children to school.
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Like my friends, I want to work hard and do well in life Aisha
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“It is a conflict between short-term gains versus long-term benefits,” she explains. “The advantages of an education will not be seen straight away whereas money provided by a son or daughter who are working is immediate.
“Parents need to be convinced that educating their children is a worthwhile option. In some cases they need cash or food incentives to drop their children off at school. That is especially the case with poorer and less well educated children.”
The government and the UN say that the country’s success in getting children into primary schools – there is a 90% enrolment rate – is a significant achievement and puts the country well on target towards meeting its MDG target of universal primary education.
There are 365,925 primary schools in the country and more than 88,000 secondary schools.
“The number of of enrolled students increased from 12 million in 1990 to over 16 million in 2008,” says UNDP spokesman Sakil Faizullah.
“Similarly the net enrolment rate was boosted from 60% in 1990 to 90.8% today.
“Furthermore the level of gender equality has also improved, with the number of girl pupils and female teachers steadily increasing in recent years.”
‘Particularly vulnerable’
But despite the progress, key challenges remain.
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THE EIGHT MILLENNIUM DEVELOPMENT GOALS
 Eradicate extreme hunger and poverty
Achieve universal primary education
Promote gender equality and empower women
Reduce child mortality
Improve maternal health
Combat HIV/Aids, malaria and other diseases
Ensure environmental sustainability
Develop a global partnership for development
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These include improving the quality of education and making education more inclusive, especially in remote rural areas of the country.
“Disadvantaged children – such as children with disabilities or from ethnic minorities – are particularly vulnerable to exclusion from educational opportunities,” a recently published UN report says.
“There are many children who are not going to school but who could attend if schools were more inclusive and child friendly.”
Experts say that the quality of teachers needs to be improved.
Approximately 25% of teachers in government primary schools are untrained and memorising facts still remains the dominant way of teaching in many schools.
“Furthermore there is little emphasis on developing analytical, practical skills,” said Mr Faizullah.
“This results in several issues such as low achievement rates, high drop-out and high repetition rates. Currently it takes an average of 8.6 years for a child to complete the five-year primary school cycle.”
Other problems cited by education officials include poor contact hours between pupils and teachers. These average half the international standard of 900-1,000 hours a year.
Ninety per cent of schools in the country are double shift, meaning that students in grades one and two attend in the morning and students from grades three to five in the afternoon.
Improving sanitary conditions has also been cited by the government and the UN as a priority for primary schools.
While the number of toilets has increased, an acute shortage remains. In 2008, 5% of schools reported having no toilet at all, while 14.7% said that they had only one. On average, primary schools have 150 pupils for every toilet.
“Similarly, poor functioning tube wells and access to water, including water free from naturally occurring arsenic, continue to challenge schools and impact on the retention and drop-out rates of children,” the UN report says.
Reference Link
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8587387.stm
Courtesy
BBC News
Meeting Millennium Development Goals
2015 deadline
Are developing countries on track to meet the 2015 deadline for implementing the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)? The BBC’s Alastair Lawson travelled to Bangladesh to assess how much progress is being made in improving the lives of the most vulnerable children and women.
Forty per cent of Bangladesh’s population of more than 150 million live on less than $1 a day – in many respects the country is a microcosm of the challenges the UN faces as it struggles to achieve the MDG targets.
Its population of children aged between five and 17 is estimated by the UN to be about 42 million.
The country is home to 14 UN agencies and most of the world’s leading aid organisations. As Bangladesh is a functioning democracy, those agencies can for the most part operate free of political interference.
‘Remarkable progress’
If the country is to meet the MDG targets, the UN says it faces a daunting financial challenge – a recent report estimates the cost to be in the region of $104.18bn between now and 2015.
There are 16.4 million Bangladeshi children aged between six and 10
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The UN report said Bangladesh needed to spend $66 per head in 2005 rising to $102 per head in 2015.
The World Bank in Dhaka says that will be difficult to achieve and will require significant improvements in the country’s tax collection system.
But there is plenty of positive and negative data when assessing Bangladesh’s progress towards the MDGs.
On the positive side, it has achieved almost universal gender parity in primary education. The country’s primary education system is regarded as one of the best among developing countries in the world.
Similarly, the UN says that Bangladesh has made “remarkable progress” in reducing the under-five mortality rate over the last two decades.
The infant mortality rate – defined as mortality between zero to one year old – has also “decreased impressively”.
But on the negative side it says that a “significant number” of children are still severely malnourished.
Bad news
On maternal health, progress has also been made.
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THE EIGHT MILLENNIUM DEVELOPMENT GOALS
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The maternal mortality ratio has been reduced from 574 deaths per 100,000 live births in 1991 to 320 per 100,000 live births in 2001.
In 2006 it was estimated to be 290 per 100,000 live births, but that figure may rise because of recent floods and cyclones.
“The country is more or less on track to meet the MDG target of 143 per 100,000 live births by 2015,” a UN report says.
Yet even here, there is bad news buried within the good.
Approximately 85% of deliveries take place in the home, the UN report says, many without medically trained providers.
It was exactly these kind of depressing statistics that prompted more than 100 presidents, prime ministers and leaders of the world’s nations in September 2000 unanimously to agree upon the MDGs.
These goals focused predominantly on providing nutrition, energy, water, education, health care and environmental protection for one half of the world’s one billion poorest citizens by 2015.
Most of the eight MDGs directly or indirectly affect children. Goal two is to achieve universal primary education and goal three is to reduce child mortality.
The aim of this series is to find out whether the plethora of aid agencies in Bangladesh – nearly all of whom have signed up to the MDGs – are making any difference to the lives of the poorest people in the capital, Dhaka.
It consists of four case studies from the city’s slums:
- A 10-year-old girl who works in a sweatshop
- A nine-year-old boy who hawks cigarettes on the streets of Dhaka
- A nine-year-old girl who is receiving an education
- A mother about to give birth
The overall picture that emerges is of a country where “remarkable progress” has indeed been made. But it also shows a country where much still needs to be done.
“Child mortality has come down over the years so good progress has been made. But the challenges are enormous,” says UN Bangladesh head Renata Lok Dessallien.
“This is a country of over 150 million people, 40% of whom are still below the poverty line.
“It will cost a lot to bring them up to a decent standard of living. The government has done a lot, but there is a lot more that still needs to be done.”
Reference Link
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8587387.stm
Courtesy
BBC News
Bangladesh takes experts to the village, via internet
Mark Dummett has a webchat with Professor Tofail Ahmed who takes part in link-up consultations with a rural diabetes hospital
The government of Bangladesh has begun work on an ambitious new scheme to tackle poverty with the help of the internet. It plans to improve schools, hospitals, businesses and government services by linking them to the web by 2021.
At the moment, most villages – and even some communities in the capital Dhaka – do not even have access to electricity.
But the rapid spread of mobile phones to even the most remote and impoverished parts of the country in recent years, has shown what is possible.
“This will be a digitised nation depending on information technology, for information, for services, for all kinds of activities that individuals can do,” the finance minister, Abdul Muhith, told the BBC.
“This is a simple dream, and is really workable.
“It is the ideal solution for Bangladesh’s various problems. I’m sure that by 2021 the largest sector in Bangladesh is going to be information technology, not textiles and garments.”
Power cuts
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 A season of reports from 8-19 March 2010 exploring the extraordinary power of the internet, including: Digital giants – top thinkers in the business on the future of the web
Mapping the internet – a visual representation of the spread of the web over the last 20 years
Global Voices – the BBC links up with an online community of bloggers around the world
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This marks a big change with the past. Previous governments were suspicious of the internet, and imposed high charges on service providers.
Bangladesh is one of the poorest countries in Asia, with a largely rural population, so relatively few people have ever gone online in their lives.
At the moment, the government’s plans are still vague and many Bangladeshis are sceptical of ministers’ boasts of the impending digital revolution, especially as power cuts are only getting worse. The country’s infrastructure is dreadful – gas and water supplies are also drying up – and the bureaucracy is famously corrupt.
But some organisations have already started connecting poor communities to the web, and begun to make a difference to people’s lives – which suggests that the government’s vision may indeed well work.
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 The sky is the limit for what can be achieved here Mahbub-el-Elahi Prince, owner of Aral Bazaar Community Information Centre
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Aral Bazaar, a three-hour drive from Dhaka, is a typical small Bangladeshi town. Surrounded by paddy fields and banana groves, it is a sleepy place where the men gather to drink tea and the women stay at home to look after the kids.
But in its small row of shops, and sharing room space with a photo studio decorated with pictures of Bollywood actresses, Aral Bazaar now has its very own “Community Information Centre”.
It is one of 500 set up by Grameenphone, Bangladesh’s largest mobile phone provider, which was founded with the help of Muhammed Yunus, the Nobel Peace laureate and micro-credit pioneer.
“The sky is the limit for what can be achieved here,” says Mahbub-el-Elahi Prince, owner of the centre, which is little more than two computers connected to the web.
E-farmers
A consultation on the web, is better than a two-day trip to meet an expert face-to-face
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“People can come and communicate with their relatives who live abroad, but most of my customers are farmers who want advice on their crops.”
Prince is able to connect them to a Dhaka-based website called E-Krishok (E-farmer).
Faruque Mia, for example, wanted to know what was wrong with his pumpkin plant. He brought two brown leaves and a diseased looking fruit into the centre, where Prince’s assistant took digital photos. He submitted these to E-Krishok, where an expert was able to examine them and then send back advice on treatment.
“We used to go to a government-employed agriculture officer for this kind of help, but he works a long way away and it sometimes took two days to get anything from him. The CIC is close to where we live – that’s why everyone prefers to come here,” he said.
A more dramatic success story is taking place in an anonymous-looking hospital for diabetics in Faridpur, half a day’s drive and a river ferry ride from Dhaka.
Many of its patients are too poor to make the journey to the capital to see a consultant, so this hospital simply connects them over the web, using video-conferencing technology.
Two doctors sit with the patient, taking notes and conducting tests if required, while the consultant asks questions. They can all see and hear each other on large TV screens.
“This has brightened the possibility of taking care of the rural population as we would take care of the affluent and urban population,” Professor Tofail Ahmed of the Bangladesh Institute of Research and Rehabilitation in Diabetes, Endocrine and Metabolic Disorders (BIRDEM), said. “It saves money, it saves time. It reduces all sorts of obstacles.”
According Zarina Begum, a patient with severely swollen limbs and face, she is now getting treatment that she would never have dreamed of receiving before.
“In my village we don’t have any good doctors. But fortunately I’ve been able to come here and see the Dhaka doctors anyway. My condition is now improving,” she said.
Bangladesh has been slow to benefit from the internet, but it is trying hard to make up for lost time.
Reference Link
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8563804.stm
Courtesy
The BBC
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