Nutritional status of under-five children in urban and rural communities of Edo State, Nigeria

Abstract

CONTEXT
Adequate nutrition is essential for strong immunological, neurological and cognitive development of children.

OBJECTIVE
To assess nutritional status of under-five children in urban and rural communities in Edo State.

METHODOLOGY
A Community based descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted between August 2017 and February 2018, involving administration of pretested structured questionnaires to caregivers of 800 under-five children selected by multistage sampling technique. Data collected was analyzed using WHO Anthro® version (1.06) and IBM SPSS version 22.0 statistical software with statistical significance set at p<0.050.

RESULTS
The mean age of under five children studied was 29.5 (16.4) for urban and 25.6 (16.4) months for rural respectively. Mothers were the primary caregivers in 378 (94.5%) urban and 386 (96.5%) rural communities studied respectively. Higher proportion of 199 (49.7%) urban than 170 (42.5%) rural under-five children were exclusively breast fed (χ2 = 4.230, p = 0.040). One-fifth of under-fives in the rural communities had abnormal BMI, while more than one-third were abnormal in the urban community. Hence a greater proportion of under five children in the urban community were stunted 105 (29.8%), wasted 104 (26.0%), underweight 67(16.8%), malnourished 44 (11.0%), 24 (6.0%) overweight, than their rural counterpart.

CONCLUSION
Exclusive breast feeding practice was low in both communities studied with nutritional status significantly better among rural than urban under-five children in Edo State. There is need to step sensitization campaigns on need to improve the nutritional status of children in our communities.