Overall burden of under-nutrition measured by a Composite Index in rural pre-school children in Purba Medinipur, West Bengal, India

Abstract

Malnutrition is a leading cause of child mortality in India. To counteract this problem, a nutrition supplementation programme has been operating under the Integrated Child Development Service (ICDS) scheme in India since 1975. Recently, the Composite Index of Anthropometric Failure (CIAF) has been implemented to measure the seriousness and severity of overall under-nutrition in a population. Since this index presents a more complete picture than the previous three conventional measures. CIAF is utililized in this study which focuses on the overall burden of under-nutrition determination in pre-school children in Purba Medinipur, West Bengal, India. Our study was conducted in 10 Integrated Child Development Service (ICDS) centres, commonly known as "Anganwadi", in the villages of the Argoal Gram Panchayat at Patashpur -II block. The total sample of 225 Bengalee ethnic children aged between 3 and 6 years was composed of 115 girls and 110 boys. The overall age and gender-combined prevalence of stunting, underweight and wasting recorded was 30.7%, 42.7% and 12.0%, respectively, and these rates were considered high (30-39%), very high (≥ 40%) and high (10-14%), respectively. CIAF results revealed the same trend, with 50.2% of these children affected by anthropometric failure, with the prevalence of underweight, wasting and CIAF higher in boys than in girls. This 50.2% CIAF result highlighted that approximately half the study children were undernourished. Since this figure is much higher than that estimated by any of the three conventional indicators,, CIAF has thus proven a far better indicator in assessing the overall burden of under-nutrition in a population. The nutritional status of the children in this study requires serious remedial action.

Prevalence of Under-Nutrition Measured by Composite Index of Anthropometric Failure (CIAF) Among the Bhumij Children of Northern Odisha, India

“…17 . The present study shows more or less the same prevalence (54.4%) of overall undernutrition (by CIAF) with the recent study (CIAF-50.2%) done by 29 Acharya et al (2013). Most importantly, it must be noted here that the findings of the present study are in accordance with those of, who also reported higher rates of CIAF compared to the other three (Underweight, stunting and wasting) more conventional measures of under-nutrition 15,17,25 .…”

“…The findings of widespread prevalence of undernutrition among tribal & non-tribal children in India were also corroborated in this study ( Table-6 (50.2%); Present study (2014) (54.4%) 15,17,30,31,16,25,29 .…”

Composite index of anthropometric failure among under 5 children attending the Immunoprophylaxis clinic in a tertiary care hospital in Nagpur, Maharashtra, India

“…31 Present study showed that 10.43% were having wasting, 11.52% were having stunting and 5.87% were underweight. Higher rates of stunting, wasting and underweight were reported by Patil 6,9,11,12,16,18,19,21,22,24,32, Lower rates were reported by Dhok RS et al, Daral S et al and Acharya A et al 10,15,23 Almost similar rates were reported by Biswas S et al 13 In the present study, we found that the composite index of anthropometric failure rates was significantly higher in case of 0-3 years of age 61.28% as compared to 3 to 6 years of age. A study done by Dasgupta A et al showed similar results.…”

“…8 Many studies have used this concept in adding up the knowledge of composite index of anthropometric failure in their geographical locations. [8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24] This study will add to the pool of such studies with an objective to study the rates of composite index of anthropometric failure in the children attending the Immunoprophylaxis clinic in a tertiary care hospital of Nagpur and to find associations with the socio demographic variables.…”

Prevalence of Undernutrition and Anemia among Santal Adivasi Children, Birbhum District, West Bengal, India

“…The overall prevalence of undernutrition according to the CIAF criteria accounted for 61.6% in this study, thereby identified more children as being undernourished than the conventional indices. CIAF prevalence rates of other studies conducted in tribal and rural areas of West Bengal ranged from 43.4% to 73.1% [51,[56][57][58][59][60][61][62]. The CIAF classification provides a holistic picture of the overall prevalence of malnutrition in a population and may be more appropriate to be applied in the scope of national programmatic actions than the conventional indices [33].…”