Nutritional Status and Feeding practices

Abstract

A Community based study was conducted to assess the growth of children from birth to fifteen months in Khyber Pukhtoonkhwa (KPK) Pakistan. The initial anthropometic measurements and feedings history of the babies were recorded within tweleve hours of the delivery which were followed by three monthly intervals fro a period of fifteeen months. One hundred and ninety children were followed longitudinally for taking their weight, height and feeding history. Thirteen percent of the babies were found to be low birth weight (<2.5kg). mean weight for age Z score WAZ), height for age Z score (HAZ) and weight for height Z score (WHZ) of the newly born babies were 0.52, -0.10 and -0.99, respectively, however, by fifteen months the WAZ, HAZ and WHZ had dropped to -1.74, -1.77 and -0.86, respectively. The prevalence of acute and chornic malnutrition assessed by using arbitarary cutoff values of < -2 WAZ (underweight), < -2 HAZ (Stunteed) and < -2WHZ (wasted) showed that at birth 5.3% of the babies were underweight, 3.2% were stunted and 11.1% were wasted. The percentage of children failing into these categories of malnutrition increased with age so that by fifteen months 40% of boyes and 33.3% of girls were underweight 33.3% of boys and 22.2% of girls were stunted and 20% of boyes and 11% girls were wasted. The anthropometric comparable to that of the corresponding age reference infants. The fall of in their growth trajectory getting progressively worse after six months possibly due to poor weaning practices or increased episodes of recurrent child's illnesses or a combination of both.