| EFFECTS OF FEEDING PRACTICES,
SOCIOECONOMIC AND BEHAVIOURAL FACTORS IN CHILDHOOD MALNUTRITION.
YASMEEN MUMTAZ*, ARSHAD ALI**, ARIF ALI***
ABSTRACT
Objective
Malnutrition is very common problem in our country & is a leading
cause of morbidity & mortality in children below five years
of age. In different studies many primary & secondary causes
of malnutrition were isolated. Poverty, lack of education, ignorance,
and poor socio economic conditions are important contributory factors.
In this study we tried to isolate important factors operating in
our children with more emphasis on feeding practices & behavioral
factors prevalent in our population including various food fads,
taboos & belief.
Method & Material
It was a descriptive, cross sectional study conducted at Pediatric
Department of Abbasi Shaheed Hospital Karachi, third largest tertiary
care hospital catering the need of large segment of population of
this mega polis city of Karachi. The study was conducted during
January 2010 to June 2010. One hundred cases were selected either
admitted or attended OPD due to various ailments but all of them
had significant degree of malnutrition. The age group selected was
between 3months to 5years of age; those below 3months were excluded
as they are included in a separate clinical entity of failure to
thrive. Children with neurological disability with resulted difficulty
in feeding were also excluded. Prior consent was taken from the
parents of selected cases and a questionnaire was filled by doctors.
Data was entered on SPSS & analyzed by means of charts, graph
& frequency tables.
Results
This study confirmed the importance of previously recognized factors
in causation of malnutrition in our pediatric population. Important
contributory factors were found to be poverty, illiteracy, inexperienced
mothers, food fads, faulty feeding practices & insufficient
knowledge of health care providers & parents. The concept of
hot & cold foods & their avoidance in various illnesses
, starvation therapy in diarrheal diseases, preferential feeding
of adult male members in comparison of women & children resulted
in malnutrition despite of presence of adequate food in family.
Conclusion
It was concluded that the malnutrition in our children was not only
due to lack of food, poverty and poor socio economic reasons but
attitude ,belief, food fads, faulty feeding practices, ignorance
were important factors in our study.
Key Words
Feeding practices, socioeconomic conditions, malnutrition
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