Prevalence of Malnutrition among Children Aged 6-59 in HaramayaDistrict, Oromia, Ethiopia

Abstract

Malnutrition is a general term for a medical condition caused by an improper or insufficient diet. Under nutrition is prevalent around the world. The objective of this study was to assess the prevalence of under nutrition and factors affecting nutritional status among children aged 6-59 months in Haramaya, eastern Ethiopia. The data were collected by using a well-structured pretested questionnaire. Anthropometric measurements of the children were taken to assess the nutritional status of the children. The prevalence of stunting, wasting and underweight were 36.07% [95% CI (0.314, 0.408)], 14.43% [95% CI (0.110, 0.179)] and 23.63% [95% CI (0.195, 0.278)], respectively. The current study showed that the prevalence of child under-nutrition is highly prevalent in Haramaya district. Community based nutrition program should be established; continuous nutrition supervision based on each nutritional status indicators and special attention to severely malnourished children is necessary to attempt the problem of malnutrition.