Children of Dhaka Christmas Appeal
Monday 11th December 2006
Help feed and care for a child this Christmas. Please help give
the children of Dhaka’s slums a chance to beat malnutrition and poverty.
Bangladesh is the world’s most densely populated country. Every year, the
climate is forcing thousands more families to flee to city slums as their
homes disappear under flood water.
They often lose everything they had including land and possessions. Many of
them have no choice but to start all over again in the Dhaka slums in
whatever space they can find.
The population in the packed slums of Dhaka has doubled to an astonishing
3.4 million people in just 10 years.
This is adding overwhelming pressure to an already precarious situation,
where poor housing, overcrowding and little or no sanitation provide
breeding grounds for disease.
Because of these appalling conditions more than one in 10 children in
Dhaka’s slums dies before the age of 5.
Malnutrition contributes massively to children’s vulnerability and
underdevelopment.
Young malnourished mothers produce newborn babies who are often
distressingly underweight.
Diarrhoea and respiratory diseases are a threat to their health and take
lives of children in these slums every day.
Chronically malnourished children’s physical and mental development is
seriously affected and so the poverty cycle continues.
Concern Worldwide has been working in the slums of Bangladesh for 20
years and has been delivering a range of initiatives including, nutrition
education, health services and income earning skills for parents.
Recently, David Pratt, Foreign Editor for The Sunday Herald visited some of
the areas Concern Worldwide is working in.
David Pratt, Foreign Editor, Sunday Herald, “You can’t imagine the
deprived and precarious conditions in which these families are living.
Children, adults and elders all live in cramped and filthy spaces and face a
daily onslaught from malnutrition and debt, which is forcing them even
deeper into poverty.”
Mhairi Owens, Head of Concern Worldwide Scotland, “My overwhelming
impression on visiting our programmes in Dhaka was of the resilience and
positive attitudes of people living in its slums. Improved nutrition is one
of the keys that can open the door of the urban poverty trap for these
people. We must do all we can to help with that.”
Concern’s experienced health and nutrition teams are constantly looking
for new ways to combat malnutrition and poverty in Dhaka’s slums but we need
your help.
With your support we can help families make a decent living, learn about
food and nutrition from each other and train mothers to nurse severely
malnourished children back to health.
Children in Dhaka’s slums need your help this Christmas.
To visit Sunday Herald Appeal
Click
here
Please give whatever you can today.
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