A study on nutritional status of children of 6 months to 6 years of age attending the anganwadi centres in rural Meerut

Introduction: Early childhood, that is the first six years constitutes the most crucial period in life, when the foundations are laid for cognitive, social and emotional language, physical/motor development and cumulative lifelong learning. Child malnutrition may be defined as a pathological state resulting from inadequate nutrition, including under nutrition (protein-energy malnutrition) due to insufficient intake of energy and other nutrients. Cases with mild-to-moderate malnutrition are likely to remain unrecognized because clinical criteria for their diagnosis are imprecise and are difficult to interpret accurately. Aims & Objectives: To study nutritional status of registered children 6 months to 6 years of age among rural children attending the anganwadi centres and also to find out the determinants related to nutritional status in children. Materials & Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted among the children of block Parikshitgarh attending the anganwadi centres. Simple random sampling was done and a sample of 397 was drawn from the study population. A pretested structured questionnaire was used to collect data and anthropometric measurements were recorded. Data was entered and analyzed using SPSS 19.0 version. Results: Only 29.4% of the registered children were regularly attending the anganwadi centres. Prevalence of underweight and stunting was found to be 1.0% and 1.8% respectively. Prevalence of underweight was higher among the participants of joint family (2.3%). Conclusion: The findings of study shows that only 29.4% of children between the age group of 6 months to 6 years are attending the anganwadi centres regularly and the prevalence of underweight and stunting were 1.0% & 1.8% respectively, that is very low in comparison to other studies conducted in this area, so more and more children should be mobilized to get the benefits provided at anganwadi centres to prevent malnutrition.