Trend of Malnutrition in Tigray Region from 2011/12-2014/15

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Background: Malnutrition commonly affects all groups in a community, but infants and young children are the most vulnerable because of their high nutritional requirements for growth and development. Every minute, four children in our world die of and 90% of them live in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. Of those children that survive, one in four are stunted, their physical and mental growth permanently damaged by the lack of nutritious food. Objective: To assess the trend of malnutrition in Tigray Region from 2011/12-2014/15. Method: The main aim of this study was to assess four year trends of malnutrition morbidity and mortality in Tigray region using cross-sectional study design from patients’ registration and health management information syatem data. The data was interred and coded to Epi Info and exported to SPSS version 21 for statistics analysis. Result: A total of 62,087 malnutrition cases were detected within four year. Of those 54.3% are male. Almost 88.4% are children under 5 years old. The trend of malnutrition Moderate Acute Malnutrition (MAM) morbidity were decreased 55% within four year, but the morbidity of Sever Acute Malnutrition (SAM) is still have no change or stagnant. Further the mortality of SAM was increased by 2 times. Conclusion and Recommendation: Even though the trend of MAM of the four year is decreasing the morbidity and mortality of SAM is alarming which needs qualified management at respective hospitals and Health centers to decrease the mortality.