ABSTRACT

Childhood malnutrition continues to be a public health problem of school-aged children in resource limited countries. Nutritional status which is an important index for measuring quality of life especially in children is affected by food intake and incidence of childhood infections. The study so far assess the malnutrition among children 2 to 5 years in rural areas within Ikwuano LGA, Abia state. A cross sectional study design was employed. The study used multi-staged sampling technique to select 382 children for the study, Data for the study were realized using a structured questionnaire, while the anthropometric data was realized by taking the various measurements of the children such as (weight, height, and MUAC), after which the data were analyzed using descriptive statistics. The study revealed that a good number of the respondents (58.4%) were female. It showed that More than half (52.5%) of the participants were aged between 4-5 years. Birth weight between 3.0kg-3.4kg were predominant (50.4%), majority were immunized (92%), and majority did not practice exclusive breastfeeding (82.6%). In the anthropometric characteristics of the respondents based on age the result revealed that prevalence of wasting, stunting and underweight was 7.1%, 5.6%, 2.1% respectively. The result further revealed that majority (99.4%) of the respondents ate breakfast every day and ate three times in a day (82.3%). While, majority (99.7%) consumes snacks while all the snacks common to the area of study was usually consumed by participants (73.2). the result also observed that there was a significant (p> 0.05) positive correlation between fathers educational level and height for age Z-score (r = 0.235; p = 0.000) and weight for age Z-score (r = 0.243; p = 0.000) and there was a significant (p> 0.05) positive correlation between child’s age and height for age Z-score (r = 0. 0.156; p = 0.004), weight for age Z-score (r = 0.127; p = 0.019) and MUAC (r = 0.624; p = 0.000). the study recommends that the presence of adequate nutrient intakes and good nutritional status amongst the children especially those from families in this study demonstrates the effective and efficient of education and enlightenment on sustainable food and nutrition interventions aimed at improving dietary intake and diversity as well as countering poor nutritional status.