Arsenic and high drowning rates of Bangladeshi kids

A recent study in Bangladesh links exposure to arsenic-contaminated drinking water during pregnancy to poor cognitive ability that increases the chance of death by drowning in children aged 1—5 years

Drowning accounts for 42 per cent of all deaths in Bangladeshi children aged 1—4 years. These deaths occur mostly in the rural areas of the deltaic country, with 75 per cent of them in natural water bodies less than 20 metres from the home.

Mahfuzar Rahman, lead author of the study - published in October by Global Health Action - and programme head of the research and evaluation division of BRAC, tells SciDev.Net that arsenic contamination might “impair intrauterine programming and foetal neurodevelopment which ultimately raises the risk of drowning among children.”

Rahman says: “In our five-year research it was found that 73 per cent of drowning deaths occurred among children of women who were exposed to arsenic during their pregnancy.” The study focused on the Matlab sub-district, about 55 kilometres from Dhaka, which is known to be highly arsenic-contaminated and where there is demographic surveillance data gathered by the iccdr,b.

Source: SciDevNet

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• Public Health
• Arsenic
• Human Rights