PREVALENCE AND COMPARATIVE STUDY OF MALNOURISHED CHILD BELOW 5 YEARS OF RURAL AND URBAN AREAS OF BIHAR

Abstract

Status of nutrition reflects the status of health of a country. Infant and young child feeding practices are multidimensional and age specific. Inappropriate feeding practices and their consequences are major obstacles to sustainable socioeconomic development and poverty reduction. This study was a step to sort out various prevailing feeding practices and awareness status of the family of child in rural and urban areas of Bihar state among the age group of below 5 Years and their outcome. This study was a hospital based descriptive study carried out in PMCH (OPD and Indoor) Patna Bihar. Total number of participants in our study is 180 in the age group 0-5 years which was further divided into 3 groups according to their age each group (0-6, 6-24, and24-60months), had 60 participants. These groups were further equally divided on the basis of location rural and urban; these Subgroups were further divided into 2 equal subgroups according to sex. In this study variety of food given is 63% and 50% in urban and rural population respectively. It is revealed that population getting variety of food has significantly better outcome in nutritional status rather than population not getting it. This study has revealed that population getting nearly proper consistency and calories are only 53% and 41% in urban and rural areas respectively. Population getting nearly proper consistency and calories has significantly better outcome in nutritional status rather than population not getting it. Prevalent mode of feeding in children below 6 months in non exclusive BREAST feeding is bottle feeding in rural and urban areas. 42% and 50% of urban and rural population BOTTLE feed their children above 6 months respectively bottle feeding significantly affect the outcome i.e. the poor nutritional status as compared to the KATORI spoon feeding.

Keywords: Healthy food, varieties of nutritional food intake, Breast feeding practices.