Stunting Is Associated with Food Diversity while Wasting with Food Insecurity among Underfive Children in East and West Gojjam Zones of Amhara Region, Ethiopia

Abstract

BackgroundFood insecurity has detrimental effects in protecting child undernutrition.This study sought to determine the level of child undernutrition and its association with food insecurity.MethodsA community based comparative cross-sectional study design involving multistage sampling technique was implemented from 24th of May to 20th of July 2013. Using two population proportion formula, a total of 4110 randomly selected households were included in the study. Availability of the productive safety net programme was used for grouping the study areas. A multiple linear regression model was used to assess the association between food insecurity and child malnutrition. Clustering effects of localities were controlled during analysis.ResultsStunting (37.5%), underweight (22.0%) and wasting (17.1%) were observed in East Gojjam zone, while 38.3% stunting, 22.5% underweight, and 18.6% wasting for the West Gojjam zone. Food insecurity was significantly associated with wasting (β = - 0.108, P < 0.05).Food diversity and number of meals the child ate per day significantly associated with stunting (β = 0.039, P < 0.01) and underweight (β = 0.035, P < 0.05) respectively. Residential area was the significant predictor of all indices.ConclusionThe magnitude of child undernutrition was found to be very high in the study areas. Food insecurity was the significant determinant of wasting. Food diversity and number of meals the child ate per day were the significant determinants of stunting and underweight respectively. Child nutrition intervention strategies should take into account food security, dietary diversity, and carefully specified with regard to residential locations. Addressing food insecurity is of paramount importance.

Prevalence of stunting and associated factors among preschool children: A community based comparative cross sectional study in Ethiopia

“…The findings of this study were consistent with those of other local studies from East and West Gojjam, Ethiopia which reported a stunting prevalence of 37.5% and 38.3% among children from food secure and food insecure households (FSHHs and FIHHs), respectively and reported no significant variations among both groups [34]. This similarity may be due to contextual Hosmer-Lemeshow test p value=0.74 Time spent to water; the time it takes to reach to water source (for single trip) (1.00=Reference ***=p<0.001 ** =p<0.01 *= p<0.05) similarities in socio-demographic and economic characteristics, and feeding pattern of children of the study areas.…”

“…According to this study finding, being a food secured household did not show any association with child stunting. This finding was in line with study reports from in Ethiopian and Brazil which showed the absence of association [34,51]. The absence of association might be because of other factors that directly or indirectly affect the nutritional status of children [52].…”

“…The finding was parallel with EDHS 2016 report which revealed that higher stunting rate (42%) was observed among children who were from illiterate mothers as compared to those children who were from literate mothers (17%) [8]. Similar research findings in Ethiopia were also reported by other studies which tried to show mothers' education was emerged as the key predictor of stunting [34,45]. It is argued that educated mothers have higher nutritional knowledge which intern contributed to child feeding practices of mothers and finally helped them to have a well-nourished children but, mothers with no formal education were do not [45].…”

“…Group one was with PSNP as exposed (as food insecure HHs) and group two was without PSNP as not exposed (food secure HHs). To estimate the minimum sample size of the study a stunting prevalence of 37.5% was used from the findings of a previous study in East Gojjam Zone among food secured households and in food surplus areas [34] and a 50% prevalence of stunting among food insecure households (since there were no previous specific studies conducted among food insecure households or areas at least to the time of the proposal stage of this work) were used. Then, the sample size estimation was calculated using Epi Info software and with a 95% confidence level and a 5% margin of error yielded 496.…”

Intestinal helminth infections and dietary diversity score predict nutritional status of urban schoolchildren from southern Ethiopia

“…Low child DDS (≤4) in the current study was significantly associated with stunting status [AOR (95% CI) = 2.3 (1.2, 4.7)] suggesting that a diet habitually low in micronutrients may have contributed to stunting in the current study. DDS is a recommended qualitative indicator of micronutrient adequacy of a diet [27,45] and has been shown to predict growth of children in other studies [14,46,47]. On the other hand, DDS was not independently associated with wasting status; a similar finding to previous studies that reported DDS was associated with stunting, but not with wasting [14,46,47].…”