Prevalence of Stunting and Associated Factors of Children among 6-59 Months Age in Guto Gida District, East Wollega Zone, Oromia, Ethiopia

Abstract

Nutrition is central and an important input to promote health and development. The request of human differ with respect to age, gender and during physiological changes such as complimentary feeding and child age. Ethiopia has a high prevalence of Acute Malnutrition, with almost half of Ethiopian children chronically malnourished. A community based cross- sectional descriptive survey and measurements of MUAC was used to investigate Prevalence of Stunting and Its Associated Factors among Children 6-59 Months of Age in Guto Gida District, East Wollega Zone, Oromia,  Ethiopia. Multistage random sampling technique was used and 359 children aged between 6-59 months aged were selected from 398 enrolled children to the study. The quantitative data were analyzed using SPSS for windows version (17.0) and EPI-6. Multiple logistic regressions were run to assess factors that were associated with the dependent variable at p< 0.05 and to control the confounders. Finally, the study result shows 27.5 percentage of children were severe stunted, 41.78% less than 65% median for height meaning that stunted children. The quality of water was also one of the bottlenecks of child undernourishment at study area. Despite many efforts going on, there is a need to intersectional collaboration to address the immediate and intermediate causes of child stunting in Guto Gida districts. Moreover, it is very demanding to scale-up the interventions in terms of the quality and quantity food reaching the majority who need it.

Keywords: Stunting, Associated Factors, Children, Anthropometry, Guto Gida District