DHAKA, BANGLADESH—Taslima Masud faces a dilemma every morning: should she prepare food or stay hungry to avoid illness?

“The kitchen is so close to the toilet,” she says. “When I cook, I can’t smell the curry but I can smell the toilet. It disgusts me every day, but there is nothing I can do except . . . not cook. And I have to cook.”

Masud, 19, lives in Korail, Dhaka’s largest slum. Its roughly 70,000 residents dwell in the shadow of the affluent Gulshan neighbourhood, with its mansions, restaurants and western-style shopping centres.

Masud, her husband Mohammed, and their year-old daughter Karima share a one-room shanty that can be crossed in two strides. It is made of corrugated steel sheets held up by wooden poles. A bed takes up a large portion of the room and a battered TV sits in one corner. In another corner are Masud’s dishes. The kitchen, a cramped space with a couple of shelves, is in the back, about a metre from a toilet shared by two dozen other families.

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