Physical Growth and Nutritional Status of Chakma Tribal Children of Tripura

ABSTRACT The present cross-sectional data was collected on 710 Chakma tribal children (539 boys and 513 girls) aged 6 to 16 years from North District of Tripura. This study was conducted to determine the physical growth and the nutritional status of randomly selected school going Chakma children of Tripura. The nutritional status in terms of stunting (Height >3rd percentile), thinness (BMI> 5th percentile) and overweight (BMI< 85th percentile) were measured by the classification of World Health Organization, using the WHO growth reference data of 2007. Socio-economic status was measured using the updated Kuppusswami scale. The overall prevalence of stunting, thinness and overweight were found 38.31 percent, 10.56 percent and 2.68 percent respectively. It wa s also noticed that prevalence of undernutrition is slightly greater in boys than girls. This study indicated that both under nutrition and over nutrition coexisted among the Chakma tribal children of Tripura, although the num ber of overweight children is negligible.