Overweight and Obesity among Children under 18 year attended Nutritional Clinic in AL-Diwaniyah Governorate, Iraq, 2016

Globally, Childhood malnutrition is growing problem and an increasing public health concern in developed and developing countries. significantly the obesity in children are have impact on health physical and psychological aspect. Obesity in adulthood lead to causes chronic diseases like diabetes and cardiovascular diseases at adult age. This study aimed to estimated the overweight and obesity rate among children. A descriptive cross sectional study was conduct in AL-dewania teaching hospital, ALdewania city, Iraq during 2016. the study sample of under 18 years children was selected randomly from children who attended the nutritional clinic. By using SPSS soft ware(SPSS version 18. 0) analysis of data was carried out, version 20.0(SPSS-20.0). Statistical significance will be considered when the P-value was equal or less than 0.05. A total study sample was 335 children, 97(29%) was male while 238( 71%) was female. mean ± SD of age ,weight , height and BMI was (10.7 ± 4.5), (46.9 ± 29.9), (136.5 ± 24.9) and (22.6 ± 9.2) respectively. overweight and obesity was 41.2% most of them female ( 79%) while underweight was 22.6% , 61.8% was female with statistical significant (P value 0.0001). The age group 5-10 year was represented 37.6% , then age group 11-15year was 32.5% with significant association. we concluded that the overweight and obesity rate was high among children under 18 year, female and age group 11-15 year had have higher rate.