Prevalence of Malnutrition among Children Aged under 5 Years in Phatthalung Province

Abstract

This prospective descriptive study was aimed to investigate the prevalence of malnutrition among children aged under 5 years in Phatthlaung Province. The population were 1,191 children born between January and December 2010 who were followed up and evaluated the nutritional status. The interested variable was weight for height index which classified nutritional status into 3 groups: underweight, normal and overweight. The data was analyzed by descriptive statistics. It was found that there was a decreasing trend of the malnutrition prevalence (from 2.47% at year one to 0.81%, 1.69%, 0.47% and 0.84%, respectively). However, trend of the percentage of children with normal weight was stable (from 91.23% to 92.20%, 92.12%, 94.92% and 91.77%, respectively). In addition, increasing trend for overwieght prevalence was observed (from 6.30% to 6.99%, 6.19%, 4.61% and 7.39%, respectively). The results suggested that public health professional in local areas should perform health promoting activities to prevent malnutrition among children under 5 years. In addition, children aged under 5 years with malnutrition should be followed-up continuously in order to reduce problems and impact of the malnutrition status among preschool children.