| dc.description |
Background: Malnutrition remains the most devastating problem. Globally it was estimated in 2015 that approximately around 45% of children under age of 5years had died due to malnutrition. The prevalence of overweight among under age of five has found to be increasing with time and may result to double burden of malnutrition among children under age of five years especially in developing countries. Various studies on child malnutrition on the African continent have shown that demographic, socio-economic and clinical profiles of malnourished children differ from one region to the next. This study has enlightened the prevalence and some of the socio-dermographic risk factors associated with malnutrition among children aged 3-59 months in Pangani District.
Objective: The objective of this study is to determine the prevalence and risk factors associated with malnutrion among children aged 3-59 months old in Pangani district, Tanga, Tanzania.
Methodology: This was a cross-sectional community based study carried out from May to June 2016 among children aged 3-59 months who live in Pangani district, Tanga. Stratified multi-stage sumpling method was used to obtain study participants, where 4 urban streets and 8 rural villages their households were selected to participate in a study. Pre tested questionaire with closed-ended questions was used to interview children’s mothers/caregivers and anthropometric measures for children were taken.
Data was cleaned, categorized and analyzed using SPSS version 20, measures of central tendency including mean and median was calculated, OR was calculated to assess any association between socio-demographic risk factors and malnutrition. P value of less than 0.005 was considered to be significant.
Results: Prevalence of wasting (9.7%), underweight (13.8%), stunting (28.7%), overweight (4.1%) and obesity (3.8%) was found. None of the socio-dermographic risk factor was associated significanltly with malnutrition.
Conlusion: In this study prevalence of stunting (28.7%) was found higher than of other forms of malnutrition, this indicates that children under age of five years are more prone to chronic undernutrion. Therefore there is need of early detection and proper interventions of acute cases of malnutrition to rescure those children from falling into chronic malnutrition. |
|