Supporting the national action plan on nutrition: Estimating the Costs, Impact, and Cost- Effectiveness, and Economic Benefits of Expanding the Coverage of Direct Nutrition Interventions in Bangladesh

This report presents an analysis of the costs, benefits, and cost-effectiveness of implementing a set of key nutrition interventions included in Bangladesh’s second National Plan of Action on Nutrition (NPAN2). The total public investment needed to implement the interventions is estimated to be USD 536.9 million over 10 years (or about USD 53.7 million annually). This includes USD 152.8 million to maintain the current coverage of the intervention and an additional USD 384.8 million to expand their coverage gradually to reach 90% over 10 years. The analyses demonstrate that investing in nutrition in Bangladesh is very cost-effective and that the benefits it would generate greatly outweigh the initial investment costs. Expanding coverage of the interventions would, over 10 years, result in preventing almost 50,000 deaths and over 500,000 cases of stunting in children under five years of age and in averting over 860,000 DALYs. Those gains would translate into increases in economic productivity worth about USD 5.6 billion over the productive lives of the children who benefited from the interventions. The benefit-cost ratio would be 20.5, which means that every dollar invested in nutrition would bring in over 20 dollars in economic benefits. Averting one death would cost about USD 7,700; averting one DALY, about USD 447, and preventing once case of stunting, about USD 765. Geographic targeting in the short and medium term could lead to increased efficiency of investments.