Nutritional Status of Adolescent Girls in Bangladesh: A Review Paper Focusing on Regional and Institutional Variations

Adolescence is the most important period of life for overall growth and development. Nutritional deficiency in this period leads to poor nutritional status such as stunting, wasting, underweight and anemia. As for girls, they are the most vulnerable group for malnutrition and having major consequences since they will be mothers in future. The objective of this paper is to review the nutritional status of adolescent girls at different regional and institutional level. From the study we found that about 66% of the adolescent girls were suffering from underweight all over the country along with 51.2% stunting and 20.3% wasting. A comparison between urban and rural girl’s nutrition with same economic condition was conducted. The prevalence of underweight was found 61.7% in urban area and 42.3% in rural area. But severe thinness was 22.4% among urban girls where it was 10.3% among rural girls. There has been evidence that girls with frequent occurrence of illness have shown poor nutritional status and vice versa. The prevalence of fever and jaundice were twice as high in underweight girls (66.7%) as girls with normal weight (33.3%). Periodic food shortage, economic status, age, geographical location, poor knowledge and health care facilities were some of the factors identified that contribute to the poor nutritional status. Improved nutritional services and policies concerning adolescent nutrition as their major focus may play an important role in improving the nutritional status of adolescent girls in Bangladesh.