Abstract
Undernutrition among children is a major public health concern worldwide, more prevalent in Asia and Africa. It manifests itself in various forms such as wasting or stunting or underweight and retards physical and mental development, increases susceptibility to infection, and reduces educational attainment and productivity. The present study was undertaken to assess the level of wasting, stunting, and underweight and determine its associates among slum children of 3–9 years of age, residing in Bhubaneswar city, India. After obtaining informed consent, a total of 249 children from 249 households were studied and their parents/guardians were interviewed to collect all relevant information. 23.3%, 57.4%, and 45.4% of children were found to have wasting, stunting, and underweight, respectively. Variables like birth order of child, period of initiation of breastfeeding and mother's education were found to be strong predictors of wasting, whereas toilet facility in household and practice of drinking water storage were significantly associated with stunting among slum children as revealed in multiple regression analysis. Thus, a multipronged approach is needed such as giving priority to improve education for slum community especially for women, creating awareness regarding benefits of early initiation of breastfeeding, small family size, and proper storage of drinking water, and providing toilet facility in slum households which could improve the nutritional status of slum children.
Highlights
Nutrition has been recognized as a basic pillar for social and economic development
Households where the practice of storing drinking water was satisfactory had less number of wasted children (13.9%) as compared to 27.6% children in households with unsatisfactory practice of drinking water storage. This difference is statistically significant (P = 0.016). Other factors such as period of initiation of breastfeeding, mother’s age at birth of child, type of family, per capita monthly income, presence of overcrowding, and toilet facility in household were not found to be significantly associated with wasting among slum children
Starting with the positive aspect of results found in the present study, it was found that almost 90% of slum children were completely immunised till date, but the prevalence of undernutrition was still very high (65.5%)
Summary
Nutrition has been recognized as a basic pillar for social and economic development. Adequate nutrition is necessary in early childhood to ensure healthy growth, proper functioning of organs, strong immune system, and neurological and cognitive development [1]. Undernutrition directly affects many aspects of children’s development such as retarding physical and mental development, increasing susceptibility to infections like sepsis, diarrhoea, pneumonia, and so forth, and further enhancing the probability of undernutrition [2, 3]. It undermines education attainment and productivity, thereby affecting the economic growth. Undernutrition manifests itself in different forms in children such as wasting (indicator of acute undernutrition) or stunting (indicator of chronic undernutrition) or underweight (combined indicator for both acute and chronic undernutrition) [3]
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