Assessment of Nutritional Status of Children in Al Hilla City

Abstract

The assessment of nutritional status of children is an essential part of monitoring health in developing countries. Early recognition of any nutritional problem is essential because community, family, teachers counseling and treatments intervention are more likely before malnutrition become worse. The present study was conducted to assess the nutritional status among children in the age group of 6-12 years also to evaluate influencing factors associated with nutritional status of the children. The study was a cross-sectional, included 211 children with ages ranging from 6-12 years randomly Household selection, Their height and weight were measured and body mass index (BMI) was calculated. The study group was classified as underweight, normal weigh, overweight and obese, using age- and sex-specific cut-off points for BMI for determined the nutritional state of the children. The nutritional status of  211 children (Boys 106 and girls 105) , 73 of them were underweight and100 were overweight and obese , the remaining were normal weight, there was a high  prevalence of underweight in girls 66% than boys 34% and 73% of them report live with not enough family income and 70%of them had history of working mothers. 80% of obese group are inactiveand 71% spent more time in watching television and time spent with computer, while full breast feeding report to be protect from childhood obesity with prevalence of 17%. This study found that sedentary life & Spending more time on television and Computer be considered as predisposing factor for childhood obesity while full breast in the first six months of life may be associated with reduced risk of obesity. There was also an association between underweight and girls resident in rural areas and working mothers.

Keywords: childhood obesity, body mass index