Assessment of nutritional status of pre-school children in Assiut governorate, Egypt

Abstract EN

Background: Although the share of malnourished children have gradually been declining over the past 25 years, 167 million children under five years old almost one third of developing country children were estimated to be underweight.

Malnutrition is directly responsible for 300,000 deaths per year in children younger than 5 years in developing countries and contributes indirectly to over half the deaths in childhood worldwide.

Malnutrition in Egypt is one of the most important factors that affect Egyptian's health and development.

For many years, malnutrition has been a severe blow on Egypt's population affecting individuals’ production, which in turn affects its economy. The objectives are to identify the determinants of the nutritional status of the studied children and to measure the magnitude of malnutrition among preschool children in Assiut Governorate. Study design: A Cross sectional community based study design was applied.

A representative sample from 3 districts of Assiut Governorate (Urban 30% and Rural 70%) in the form of cluster sampling technique, with a constant number of preschool children per cluster.

A pre-structured questionnaire was used for collecting data, interviewing the mothers in order to collect socioeconomic factors, environmental factors, gastrointestinal and respiratory morbidity.

Anthropometric measurements (height, weight, head circumference, mid upper arm circumference and skin fold thickness) were recorded for each child. Results: the total sample included 732 children aged 24-72 months with the mean age ± SD (49.9 ± 15.7) months.

The gender distribution was 363 (49.6%) males, and 369 (50.4%) females, illiteracy was 211 (41.5%) mothers and 141 fathers 27.7%).

Working status of mothers 53 (10.4%) mothers were working outside the home.

499 mothers (98.0%) had piped water supply in their houses, By using weight / age Z-score (WAZ) 11.1% were under weight, using height /age Z-score (HAZ) 28.4 %.were stunted and using weight for height Z-score (WHZ) 6.2% were wasted. Conclusion and Recommendations: Stunting constitutes a significant public-health problem among the pre-school children in Assiut Governorate, while under-nutrition represents a relatively less common problem.

Interventions to improve socioeconomic and environmental situations are recommended to overcome these problems.