Assessment Of Personal Hygiene, Nutritional Status and Morbidity Profile Among Primary School Children of Kanchipuram District, Tamil Nadu- A Cross-Sectional Study

Background: Child health is foundational to adult health and well being.Good health of the children is crucial for their learning and cognition ability.Children with bad hygienic practices are more prone to develop diseases and the vicious circle formed by infection and malnutrition affects their physical growth and cognitive performance.Objectives: 1.To assess the nutritional status, personal hygiene and morbidity profile among school children (6-10 years) of Kanchipuram District, Tamil Nadu. 2. To determine the association of personal hygiene and nutritional status with morbidity among school children (6-10 years) of Kanchipuram District, Tamil Nadu.Methodology: A cross-sectional study was conducted among 900 children in selected primary schools of Kanchipuram District from October 2018 to March 2020, using a pretested semi structured questionnaire followed by general physical examination.Data obtained was entered in Microsoft excel and analyzed using SPSS 25v.Results: Out of the 900 school children, 56.1% were boys and 43.9% were girls.Mean age of children was 8.12 1.34.Good personal hygiene was found in 20.2% children followed by average (16.6%) and poor (63.2%).Nutritional status was normal in 16.1% whereas 83.9% children were malnourished.Morbidity was present in 37.3% and absent in 62.7%.The overall association of personal hygiene by morbidity profile and nutritional status by morbidity profile was found statistically significant (p-value = 0.03) (p-value = 0.01) respectively.Conclusion: It is inferred that majority of the children had poor health which may interfere with nationwide health indicators yielding a substandard outcome.