Abstract
Background: Brick-kiln workers’ children face elevated malnutrition risk from limited healthcare, poor facilities, poverty, infections, nutritional deficits, and awareness gaps, complicating intervention efforts due to their migratory work. Objectives: 1. To assess the nutritional status of under-5 children in brick kilns of a rural area of Hooghly district, West Bengal 2. To find out the factors associated with the nutritional status of the study participants. Methodology: A setting based cross-sectional study was conducted with simple two-stage cluster sampling in selected brick kilns of a rural area of Singur, Hooghly district, West Bengal from June to December 2023 among 162 participants. Participants were interviewed after obtaining informed consent about socio demography, Immunisation, WASH practices (WHO/ UNICEF JMP), dietary diversity (IDDS) and Household Food insecurity (HFIAS). Quantitative analysis was done using SPSS v16. Thematic analysis was done for qualitative strand and is still under process. Ethical approval was taken from Institutional Ethics Committee of AIIH&PH, Kolkata. Results: One-third of the children were more than 2 years old while male: female ratio was 1:1. 60% caregivers were illiterate. Stunting, underweight and Wasting was found to be 64%, 45%, 26% respectively. WASH practices were found inadequate for water practices (20%), sanitary practices (41%) & hygiene (50%). Still one-fourth of the participants were not fully immunised. Food diversity was absent in half of the participants while two-third participants were found to be food insecure. Maternal malnutrition, unimproved sanitary & hygiene practices, incomplete immunization, dietary diversity and household food insecurity were found to be significant (p value <0.05). Conclusion: The study revealed poor immunization status, malnutrition in children of Brick kiln workers. There is an urgent need for strengthening the health and nutritional interventional programmes for children of migratory population.
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