2020, VOL. 6 ISSUE 3, PART G
Abstract:Introduction: Being a major public health concern, malnutrition is quite common in India. More importantly, it affects infants and young children the most resulting in tragic health problems. So, to combat this, we focussed on the identification of malnourished children in the study area.
Methods: A cross-sectional study among 268 mothers of six to twenty-four months old children was conducted in Harpur panchayat, Pusa block, Samastipur district, Bihar. A pre- structured standard questionnaire was used and both general and anthropometric information were collected. Nutritional status of infants and young children was determined by processing the data on excel sheet, using descriptive statistics.
Results: The prevalence of severe acute malnutrition was 5.97 per cent where as severe stunting and severe underweight were 1.49 per cent each. Besides, the outbreak of moderate wasting, moderate stunting and moderate underweight rate were 5.22, 13.06 and 5.22 per cent whereas mild wasting, mild stunting and mild underweight rate were found to be 13.06, 33.21 and 20.90 percent respectively. On the other hand, 9.71 per cent children were coming under overweight and obese category while 2.60 per cent children were significantly tall than those of well nourished infants and young children.
Conclusions: Considering the high prevalence of malnutrition in the study area, it was suggested that proper preventive measures ought to be taken as soon as possible.