Nutritional status among children aged 24-59 months in rural Bangladesh: An assessment measured by BMI index

This study employs statistical methods to identify the factors associated with nutritional status among children aged 24-59 months in rural Bangladesh. Bangladesh Demographic Health Survey data 2004 (N=652) were used for this study. Child’s nutritional status was defined in terms of Body Mass Index (BMI\wt in kg/ht in m2). Descriptive and multivariate logistic regression methods were employed in analyzing the data. It was observed that that girl children’s were more under weighted than the boys. This study elucidates that although maximum numbers of children (both boys and girls) aged 24-59 months have healthy weight a large portion of them were under weighted .Bivariate analysis shows that mothers who gave last birth in their middle age group (20-30 years) have more healthy boys (61.7%) and girls (56.1%) children as compared the mothers who gave their first birth during adolescence (<20 years) and women with higher age group (≥30 years). Multivariate logistic regression analysis shows that women who worked for cash were two-and-a-half times more probability of having healthy weighted child than among the mothers who did not work for cash. It was also found that proportion of under weighted children was significantly greater among those who had not taken vitamin A supplementation. The other main contributing factors likely to affect nutritional status of children aged 24-59 months were respondent’s education, husband’s education and occupation, household assets index and mothers’ age at last birth,