Prevalence of Undernutrition and Morbidity in Children Aged 6-59 Months in Three Regions with High Security Challenges in Burkina Faso: The Case of the Centre-North, North and East Regions

Abstract

Burkina Faso recorded 1.800.000 internally displaced persons (IDP) in February 2022 due to the security crisis. 56% of them are in the East, Centre-North and North regions, where the nutritional situation of children aged 6 to 59 months is poorly known, hence this study. The nutritional status of 537 IDP and host children aged 6-59 months was assessed using the SMART rapid methodology in the North Central, North, and East regions. Data were analyzed using ENA for SMART 2020 and IBM SPSS Statistics 20 software to generate prevalence by region based on household residence status. The prevalences of global acute malnutrition (GAM), chronic malnutrition (CM) and underweight (UW) were 16.4%, 21.7% and 16.9% respectively for the East region; 15.7%, 32.7% and 29.6% for the Centre-North region and 18.4%, 29.5% and 28.9% for the North region. GAM was more prevalent among IDP than among hosts in the Eastern and Northern regions (17.3% VS 15.7%) and (19.0% VS 18.0%). However, in the Centre-Nord region, it is higher among the host population (17.0% VS 13.2%). For chronic malnutrition, among IDPs and hosts respectively, the prevalences are 14.8% and 26.9% in the East, 37.7% and 30.2% in the Centre-North and 25.3% and 32.4% in the North. The weight insufficiency were 17.3% and 16.7% in the East, 35.8% and 26.4% in the Centre-North and 27.8% and 29.7% in the North. The nutritional situation of children aged 6 to 59 months in the three emergency regions is not satisfactory. The GAM exceeds the WHO's critical thresholds (15%).