Nutritional Status and Related Factors among Primary School Children, at Mangalore

Malnutrition is major public health problem in developing countries causing higher morbidity and mortality among children. The present study described nutritional status and related factors among primary school children in Mangalore so as to plan and provide basis to health care providers and policy makers to develop strategy and prevent malnutrition. This study included a total of 110 school children from class 5, 6 and 7 from the primary school situated in Mangalore City. The students were assessed for knowledge, attitude, enabling factors and reinforcing factors towards the nutrition through a questionnaire. Nutritional status of the children was determined by anthropometric Measurements and classified according to the degree of malnutrition based on Gomez standard of classification (weight- for- age) and Water low’s classification (height- for- age). Majority of the children were malnourished (82.73%) and most of the children were moderately malnourished (43.64%). Only 20% of the children had adequate nutritional knowledge and good attitude was observed only in 13.64% of the children. Boys constituted 51.82% of the study population and boy to girl ratio was 1.07:1. Most of the children were aged 11 years (34.55%) and the mean age was 11 ± 1 years. First birth order was noted among 34.55% of the children. The money spent for snacking was between one to five rupees in 54.55% and 38.18% of the children had two times snacking a day. Majority of the children lived with their parents (93.64%). With regard to parents educations and occupation, 57.27% of the parents (both father and mother) were educated upto elementary school and were labours (Father 78.18% and mother 75.45%). The average monthly income was between Rs. 1,000 to 5,000 in 47.27% of the children Majority of the children (69.09%) had > 5 family members and 39.09% of the children had no siblings Almost all the children (99.09%) were aware about health awareness programme and 97.27% were aware about food supplementary support programme in schools. Positive association was found between nutritional status and attitude towards the nutrition (p=0.004), age (p<0.001), mothers education (p=0.002) and father’s education (p=0.016). There is high prevalence of malnutrition among the school children of study area aged between 9 to 13 years. Initiatives towards the increasing awareness of nutrition in children may help to reduce the burden of malnutrition among these children.