MALNUTRITION AMONG YOUNG CHILDREN IN SQUATTER SETTLEMENTS OF KARACHI - A CONTINUING HEALTH PROBLEM

Abstract

POS18 In order to assess the growth and nutritional status as part of the baseline survey of the Urban Health Program in squatter settlement of Karachi conducted by the Community Health Sciences Department of AKU, we went to each house in the area and conducted anthropometric measurements on children under five years of age who were present at home at the time of interview. We recorded height and weight of 5231 children born in the period 1-59 months preceding the survey. Among them 51% were males and 49% were females. We assessed the nutritional status of these children in terms of weight for age (general malnutrition), height for age (stunting) and weight for height(wasting) using the international reference population of the United States National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) and the Center for Disease Control (CDC), as recommended by WHO. We evaluated the nutritional status by calculating the extent to which the anthropometric measurements deviated from measurements for the reference population of children as defined by NCHS/CDC. Overall, 42 % of the total children were underweight whereas 12.6 % were severely underweight for their age. On average, 49% of children under five years of age were stunted while 25.5% were severely stunted. The prevalence of wasting was 12.5% while severe wasting was found to be 2.6%. There was no significant difference between the sexes. Survey findings are consistent with other nutritional surveys and indicates that malnutrition remains a major public health problem in Pakistan. Both stunting and wasting are indications of long term malnutrition and disease related to poverty and under-development within the population.