Nutritional status of infant children in selected rural areas at Nellore

Research Article
Mary Vineela Pathri, Katari Kantha and Arumugam Indira
DOI: 
xxx-xxxx-xxxx
Subject: 
Mediclne
KeyWords: 
Nutritional Status, BMI, Malnutrition, Infants.
Abstract: 

Introduction: Children are the future of nation and society. Irrespective of education, income and social class differences, malnutrition contribute to 60% of deaths in every year. Among worldwide population,55% of children less than 5 years of age found as under nourished. In India, 6.1 million school age children are stunted. Hence an attempt is being made to find the nutritional status of infant children inselected rural areas at Nellore, Andhrapradesh.Objective: To assess the nutritional status of infant children and to find association between anthropometric measurements and nutritional status of infants.Material and methods: The present community based cross-sectional study was conducted in rural areas of Nellore City of Andhrapradesh state (India) from15/12/13 to 20/1/14. The study sample included 71infants selected by convenience sampling method. Results: In the present study 71 infants included in the study, in that, 56(78.87%) infants were normal weight, 10 (14.08%) were under weight and 5(7.05%) were overweight. Among these 71 infants, 27 (38.02%) were normally nourished, 24 (33.8%) were mild malnourished, 12(16.9%) were moderately malnourished, 5 (7.04%) were severely malnourished and 5(7.04%) were over nourished. Multivariate analysis for height and weight with iron, protein and calories were done. It has shown that there is a significant relationship between height and weight with iron, protein and calories intake at α =0.05 level. In this study statistically significant association was found between Nutritional status of the children with the age of the child, gender, feeding pattern, number of children in family, birth order, type of family, food pattern, use of oil and fast food, number of meals and inclusion of fruits. Conclusion: The above results shown that there is a significant relation exists between nutritional status of the infants with the BMI and the BMI will be influenced with iron, protein, and calories intake of the Infant Children.