Prevalence Of Malnutrition Among Under-5 Children And Its Association With Infant And Young Child Feeding Knowledge And Practices Among Mothers In Nadia District, West Bengal: A Cross-Sectional Study

Background: Adequate knowledge and practices of Infant and Young Child Feeding (IYCF) among mothers is the key area to combat childhood malnutrition. The term malnutrition covers two broad groups of conditions. One is ‘under-nutrition’—which mainly includes stunting (low height for age), wasting (low weight for height), and under-weight (low weight for age) the other is overweight and obesity. The current study was conducted in the Nadia district to assess the nutritional status of under-five children and to find out its association, if any, with IYCF knowledge and practices among mothers. Methods: A community-based cross-sectional study was conducted among 351 under-5 child-mother dyads recruited from 32 sub-centers of the Chakdaha block following a multi-stage random sampling method. The socio-demographic profile of the dyad, mothers’ IYCF knowledge, and practices were recorded using a predesigned, pretested questionnaire. The nutritional status of the children was assessed using WHO Anthro (version 3.2.2) software after measuring weight and height. Results: A significant 40.1%, 54%, and 51.4% of the children fell below 2 standard deviations from the international cut-off for weight-for-height, height-for-age, and weight-for-age, emphasizing the prevalence of undernutrition. Overall, only 9.4% of the study participants belonged to the normal category regarding nutrition status if all 4 criteria (weight for age, weight for height, height for age, BMI for age) had been considered. Inferential statistics revealed that those mothers having good IYCF knowledge and practice scores had higher odds of having children with normal nutritional status. Conclusion: Malnutrition, specifically under-nutrition, is still a significant public health problem that should be dealt with high priority and concerned authorities should implement a much-needed approach of targeted health educational interventions to improve maternal understanding and adherence to optimal IYCF practices & thereby improving the nutritional status of the children in future.