Pervasiveness of Malnutrition among Selected School-going Adolescents in Hyderabad District, Sindh, Pakistan.
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.67773/bios.v7i2.260Keywords:
Keywords ; stunting, underweight, male adolescent, female adolescent, Hyderabad, Pakistan.Abstract
This research study aims to find out the pervasiveness of malnutrition & its associated factors in school-going adolescents in six selected schools of district Hyderabad with age range 10-16years. Previous data did not describe nutritional research on adolescence phase. A cross-sectional study was designed by selecting 1009 children including 478 boys and 531 girls during 2018–2019 by lottery method. Children below or above 10-16 year were excluded. Socio demographic & dietary data was collected using Questionnaire. Weight, height and middle upper arm circumference (MUAC) were measured by growth chart, MUAC tape, and bathroom scale. Statistical analysis was done by using World Health Organization (WHO) growth measuring software ‘Anthroplus 2007’ that calculates the Z-Score and Percentile. Z-Score < 2 is considered as stunted or underweight child while the children below 3rd percentile are considered as stunted and underweight. SPSS version 2007 was used to calculate Chi-Square and p-value. Chi-Square gives the difference of malnutrition rate in children whereas p-value <0.05 significant difference. This research shows that overall pervasiveness of underweight in the adolescents was high 16.8% than that of stunting 14.3%. However, Stunting was higher in male adolescents 15.1% than the female adolescence 13.8% similarly male adolescents had high underweight 19.3% than female adolescence 14.7%. However, the pervasiveness of stunting was higher in late adolescence 15.5% then early adolescent 9.7% while early adolescent had high underweight 27% then late adolescent 14.4%. This study concluded that pervasiveness of stunting & underweight was higher in male as compared to female adolescents.
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