Health and Nutritional Condition of Street Children of Dhaka City: An Empirical Study in Bangladesh

The study was conducted at the seven areas in Tejgaon, known as the centre of Dhaka city, the capital of Bangladesh, which consist of 41 police stations. Street children are very common in this part of Dhaka city. A well structured questionnaire was developed containing both the closed and open ended questions to collect data through face-to-face interview with the respondents. A sample of 80 street children with a ratio of 90% boys and 10% gamines was collected through the simple random sampling method from the selected areas. Results reveal that about 65% street children are underweight. Nearly 77.5% children take their meals three times and 22.5% children eat only two times in a day. Most of the study children (85%) have developed the habit to wash their hand before taking meal that is good for their health. Findings also demonstrate that about 60.5% street children are able to take bath on a daily basis and almost 61.3% of them have been suffered from different diseases during the last 3 months prior to the commencement of the study.