Impact of Health Promoting Nutrition Intervention Package on Severe Malnutrition among Under-Five Children in Rural Northern India

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

4-17-2020

Publication Title

Current Research in Nutrition and Food Science

Volume

8

Issue

1

First page number:

238

Last page number:

244

Abstract

Globally, 17 million children under 5 years of age are affected with severe malnutrition. Severe wasting is a key contributor (12.6%) to child deaths due to nutritional deficiencies and is responsible for several morbid conditions. The purpose of this paper was to assess the impact of nutritional counseling intervention on severe malnutrition among rural under-five children in Northern India. Nine villages in an ongoing project were included in the study to include all the under-five children (N=573) from these villages. Nutritional assessment was performed as per World Health Organization (WHO) child growth standards. Based on their z-scores of malnourishment indicators, children affected with severe malnutrition were included for customized health promoting nutritional intervention, other than the regular nutrition counseling sessions for all malnourished under-five children. Post nutrition counseling changes in anthropometric measurements were recorded at an interval of 6 months. Significant changes were observed in mean z- scores before and after nutrition intervention that declined from -3.05 to -1.81 and -3.16 to -2.25 for weight for height (WHZ) and weight for age (WAZ), respectively. The results showed that the intervention was effective in community-based management of severe malnutrition among children in rural Northern India.

Keywords

Severe malnutrition; Anthropometric measurement; Nutritional counseling; Under-five children

Disciplines

Human and Clinical Nutrition | Life Sciences | Nutrition

Language

English

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