PREVALENCE OF MALNUTRITION AMONG CHILDREN UNDER FIVE

Malnutrition continues to be a significant public health and development concern globally. It is a serious problem because it is causing the deaths of 3.5 million children under 5 years old per- year. Its magnitude is still high in sub Saharan countries including Nigeria. The main objective of this study therefore, was to assess associated factors of malnutrition in under five years children in Ewoyi community in Esan North east Uromi Edo state. A hospital based cross-sectional study was conducted in July 2018 to assess the nutritional status of children aged zero to fifty-nine (0-59) months in the facility to identify factors leading to malnutrition in the community. A total of three hundred and twenty-eight (328) children and their caregivers participated. A pre-tested, structured, interviewer administered questionnaire consisting of mothers’ childcare practices, mother and child socio-demographic factors and anthropometric measurement was used to gather data. A systematic sampling method was used in sampling the caregivers over a three-week period. Nutritional indices measured were height, weight and mid upper arm circumference. Data was entered into Microsoft Excel 2013. WHO Anthro Plus software version 3.2.2 was used in determining the z-scores and STATA 15 was used to perform univariate and multiple logistic regression analysis. The prevalence of malnutrition was 78.05%. The prevalence of stunting and underweight were 55.7% and 31.7% respectively. Also, 3.85% had severe acute malnutrition and 15.85% had moderate acute malnutrition. 6.71% of mothers were less than 20 years (teenagers), which was quite significant percentage of teenage mothers and 93.29% were adult mothers. The following factors were found to be associated and contributed to the development of malnutrition among under five in the study area. These factors were: maternal age, hygiene practice of the mother, sanitation factors, source of drinking water, recent medical history of diarrhea or respiratory tract infection. It was also noticed that the highest proportion of malnourished children were in age group 6-20 months.
From the multivariate analysis, older mothers were less likely to have a stunted child than a young mother for all various age groups in reference to age less than 20 years. Though the lowest prevalence of underweight was seen in those who were 0-6 months (6.45%), there was no pattern in the prevalence of underweight with increasing age
These findings suggest that education on infant and young child care and feeding practices need to be re-structured to suit the population. In addition, more efforts such as periodic assessments need to be put into existing interventions to help reduce the prevalence of malnutrition.