Bangladesh
In Bangladesh 80% of girls and boys start primary school, but nearly half of them do not finish. The low-lying delta lands of Bangladesh, home to some 30 to 40 million people, are particularly prone to floods and cyclones.
- We've enabled 2,759 more five-year-olds to go to preschool
- We're helping 2,500 working children catch up on their basic education
- We've referred 5,167 children under the age of five to health clinics
- We've freed 2,120 illegally imprisoned boys and 348 girls
Save the Children in Bangladesh
We've worked in Bangladesh since 1970, providing relief during and after the war for independence from Pakistan. Working together with local partner organisations, we''re working to protect children from violence, abuse and exploitation. We work mainly in the flood and cyclone-prone areas of the delta and also the Chittagong Hill Tracts, the mountainous area that is home to Bangladesh's indigenous minority ethnic groups.
We're helping more children get a good start in life
In many remote, rural areas there aren't enough teachers. Children from indigenous minority ethnic groups are often turned away by teachers and administrators because they don't speak fluent Bangla.
We're working to remove the barrier of language. In Khagrachari, the Hill District Council and the Regional Council have funded workshops on multilingual education run by a local NGO and ourselves. As a result, 60 preschool teachers are now using the children's mother tongue in the classroom, and the children now attend school regularly.
Altogether, we've enabled 2,759 more five-year-olds to go to preschool. Of these, 1,620 are girls and 1,259 are from indigenous minority ethnic groups.
We're improving the lives of working children
About 4.9 million Bangladeshi children, many as young as five, work to support their families or for their own survival.
Working with the government and non-governmental organisations in five districts we've helped to set up special schools that are open during break times and at night. Here, working children can drop in and catch up on the education they're missing. So far, 2,500 children between the ages of five and 12 are benefiting. About 2,600 children are able to get free basic medical advice and treatment through a referral system to NGO-run clinics and government health centres.
We're improving the health of children and young people
Nearly half of all children below the age of five years in Bangladesh are either underweight or stunted. Malnutrition is an underlying cause in two-thirds of the deaths of children under five. Children often die, even when correctly diagnosed with malnutrition, because they don't receive the treatment they need.
Save the Children has set up a system in two sub-districts of Kurigram to monitor both nutrition and household incomes. So far, we've referred 5,167 children under the age of five to health clinics and 94% of them received treatment ? for malnutrition and other diseases such as respiratory infections, diarrhoea and skin diseases.
Find out more
- Download the Bangladesh country brief (PDF 101KB).
- Read about 12 year old Nazma's experiences of Cyclone Sidr.
- Find out how Salma ? and her four small children ? survived Cyclone Sidr.
- Read about Shahana's school, which was completely destroyed by the cyclone.
- Read about Davina McCall's trip to Dhaka, to encounter child labour first-hand.
- See our photo story of Bangladesh.
Get on Track
The UN met on 25 September to discuss the Millenium Development Goals (MDGs). All over the world people came together to urge the UN to 'get on track' with MDG 4: to cut child deaths by two-thirds by 2015.
Find out more about Get on Track around the world.
Save the Children in Bangladesh organised seven rallies in different parts of the country, along with a petition-signing programme at 70 health centres across the seven districts. A whopping 55,893 people took part!
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Bangladesh related articles
- Monday 3 December 2007 After the cyclone - Shahana's story from Bangladesh
- Shahana's school was destroyed by the cyclone in southern Bangladesh. She was meant to be sitting her exams this week, but now the school is destroyed, the teachers have left, all student records have been lost.
- Monday 18 February 2008 The Life-or-Death Lottery: inequality and injustice in the fight to save children's lives
- A major new report from Save the Children today reveals the best and worst performers in the fight to keep children in the world's poorest countries alive.
- Tuesday 11 December 2007 Davina McCall's trip to Dhaka, Bangladesh
- TV presenter Davina McCall and our Vice-President Gordon Campbell Gray came face to face with the grim realities of child labour when they met children working in a basement factory in Dhaka, Bangladesh.
- Thursday 22 November 2007 Nazma's story from the Bangladesh emergency
- Nazma, 12, lives with her parents, two sisters and brother in Patharghatha, a village near the Bangladeshi coast of the Bay of Bengal. She and her family rode out Cyclone Sidr in a shelter.
- Monday 19 November 2007 Bangladesh Cyclone Sidr emergency appeal
- Children in Bangladesh need urgent help after surviving the worst cyclone to hit the country in the past decade, according to Save the Children's emergency team on the ground.
- Friday 16 November 2007 Responding to the Bangladesh cyclone
- Save the Children's emergency response teams are helping thousands of families who fled their homes in Bangladesh after a massive cyclone struck yesterday (Thursday).
- Thursday 9 August 2007 Shameless cast support South Asia floods appeal
- The Shameless cast took to the streets of Manchester today to raise cash for Save the Children's South Asia flood appeal.
- Friday 6 July 2007 World's poorest facing food costs more than three times their income
- The world's poorest people are facing food costs that are more than three times their income, according to a new report.
