Dietary utilization of vitamin A evaluation by pre-school students in Southern Ethiopia- a cross-Sectional analysis

Abstract

Abstract: Shortage of vitamin A is a public health issue in Ethiopia. Investigations demonstrated that especially pre-school students are so influenced by this issue. There are numerous reasons, which cause vitamin A shortage while the insufficient dietary information is the main reason in developed countries. This study's aim is assessing dietary vitamin A utilization by pre-school students aged group 2 to 5 years in Sodo Zuria community, South Ethiopia. A cross-sectional study has been performed utilizing 2 step group sample method has been utilized for selecting the usual samplings of 576 pre-school children from 3 rural kebeles of the investigation site. An adjusted 7-day HKI food frequency questionnaire and 24 hours FANTA food variety score have been utilized for estimating the dietary in taking of Vitamin A. This study's outcome determines that 99.5 percent of pre-school children had used Vitamin A rich foods from animal sources ≤ four times and 98 percent of pre-school children have been using animal and plant resources of Vitamin A rich foods ≤ six times every week. The average frequency of animal utilization resources of Vitamin A has been 1.42 times and the average utilization of whole animal plus plant resources of Vitamin A has been 3.01 times for the last one week. The results demonstrated that the utilization frequency of Vitamin A rich foods have been lower than the threshold amount of HKI and PAHO/WHO recommendations. By considering the FAO standards dietary utilization of Vitamin A by a lot of pre-school children has been insufficient and they have been in danger of VAD issue. Therefore mother or caregivers of the kids must enable their pre-school children for eating Vitamin-A rich foods per day minimum a food items which are animal foods, yellow, orange fruits, and green vegetables.