Salcedo Mejia, Alvis Zakzuk, Orozco Africano, Ortiz Ibañez, Jervis Jalabe, Jerez Arias, Crissien Borrero, Alvis Guzman
Objectives
To estimate the nutritional status in children under 5 in “Montes de María”, a post-conflict zone in Colombia- 2017.
Methods
Cross sectional observational study that use data from a survey of 15,230 households with subsidized health care insurance. From these, 2,682 children between 0-4 years with anthropometric information from 2,183 households were included. Based on the World Health Organization standards, weight and height information were used to calculate the Z-score indicator = weight-for-height (W/H), height-for-age (H/A) and weight-for-age (W/A). Z-score categories were defined as: well fed (±2), malnourished (<-2), severely malnourished (<-3). Prevalence of nutritional states were estimated and association among children characteristics, households and nutritional status were validated through Chi-X2 test.
Results
Prevalence of low weight, acute and chronic malnutrition was 2.4%, 5.5% and 8.6% respectively. Group of 0-1 years was the most prevalent in acute (6.7%) and chronic (9.6%) malnutrition. There were significant differences in prevalence between children ages (Pr<0.001) in all of three indicators, except in the prevalence of low weight for sex (Pr<0.05). Age of the head of household (Pr=0.027), education of the head of household (Pr=0.001), education of mother (Pr=0.001), number of people in household (Pr=0.001) were significantly associated with growth retardation of children.
Conclusions
In this study, acute malnutrition is higher than national level (0.9%), being children of <1 year those who presented higher malnutrition compared with the national level. Health policies related with early childhood in vulnerable population must be improved in order to reduce these figures.
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Copyright
© 2018 Published by Elsevier Inc.
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