30k

adolescents reached

65

secondary schools reached

2

districts in Northern Bangladesh reached

Opportunity

Adolescent girls can thrive with the right nutrition.

Many factors can reduce the educational achievement and future wage-earning potential of adolescents, including:

  • Anaemia in adolescent girls, due to their greater iron requirements
  • Parasitic worm infections, made worse by inadequate access to clean water and sanitation
  • School absences, due to a lack of support for best hygiene practices and menstrual hygiene management

The Government of Bangladesh has recently prioritized adolescent health and nutrition with a clear direction to provide iron-folic acid supplementation to adolescents. It is in the process of developing an operational guideline for implementation of the package of nutrition intervention for adolescents. However, no implementation plan has yet been put in place.

Our Solution

Scaling up adolescent nutrition nationwide.

Folate/Folic Acid

Folate/Folic Acid

Iron

Iron

Nutrition International provides financial and technical support for an adolescent-focused project to demonstrate the feasibility of a nationwide roll-out of the iron-folic acid supplementation policy.

We propose a large-scale demonstration project that used secondary schools to deliver an integrated package of interventions for adolescents, which include:

  • Weekly iron and folic acid supplements
  • Menstrual hygiene management support for adolescent girls
  • In-school water, sanitation and hygiene practices support
  • Behaviour change interventions to improve knowledge, attitudes and practices of adolescents regarding each of these issues, including health and nutrition
  • Training and capacity building of stakeholders, including parents, teachers, students and community members
  • Contribution to the global evidence base on adolescent nutrition programming

The Impact

Improved health status and nutrition education

With our partners in Bangladesh, we're working with schools to deliver critical nutrition interventions to adolescents, and building evidence on how to scale the program nationwide to ensure adolescents across the country have access to better nutrition.

30k

adolescents reached

65

secondary schools reached

2

districts in Northern Bangladesh reached