Author(s): Riddhi Gupta, Dr. Sarmistha Chakrabarti and Dr. Suniti Ghosh Chatterji

Abstract:
Child malnutrition continues to be a serious problem throughout the developing countries including India. Maternal malnutrition is a major predisposing factor for morbidity and mortality among women in the developing countries. The consequences of poor maternal nutritional status are reflected in low weight gain during pregnancy, high rate of infant and maternal morbidity and mortality etc. Thus child’s nutritional status is somehow influenced by the maternal nutritional status. As a result, one of the interesting field of nutritional research is to understand the relationship between maternal and child nutritional status. Hence the present study aims to evaluate the relationship between maternal and child nutritional status using anthropometry. A cross sectional study was conducted among 518 mother-child pairs from some rural and urban regions of West Bengal, India. The anthropometric measurements of height and weight were recorded following standard procedures. The results showed that the BMI of mothers were significantly associated with HAZ and WHZ of under-five children. Whereas for above-five children mother’s BMI was found to be significantly associated with the BMIZ of children only. These are indicative of a strong relation between the maternal nutritional status and short term nutritional status of children. Again the long term nutritional status of under-five children was also found to be significantly influenced by the maternal nutritional status. Thus it can be concluded that improving maternal nutritional could have a significant role in the prevention of childhood malnutrition.