Abstract:
Malnutrition is a general term for a medical condition caused by an improper or insufficient
diet. Under nutrition is prevalent around the world. The objective of this study was to assess the
prevalence of under nutrition and factors affecting nutritional status among children aged 6-59
months in Haramaya, Eastern Ethiopia. The data were collected by using a well structured
pretested questionnaire. Anthropometric measurements of the children were taken to assess the
nutritional status of the children. Multivariate multiple linear regression models by taking the
Z-score of the weight for age, height for age and weight for height of the children as dependent
variables were used to assess the relationship between child nutritional status and the
explanatory variables. The prevalence of stunting, wasting and underweight were 36.07%
[95% CI (0.314, 0.408)], 14.43% [95% CI (0.110, 0.179)] and 23.63% [95% CI (0.195,
0.278)] respectively. The significant factors which were related to the three indicators jointly
were food security status of the household, child sex, diarrhea infection, child age, and the
employment status of mother. Wealth status, additional food frequency per day, and the
residence of household were significantly related to the z score of wasting and underweight,
stunting and underweight, and wasting and stunting respectively. The current study showed that
the prevalence of child undernutrition is highly prevalent in Haramaya district. A child from a
food insecure household, a male child, diarrhea infected child, and a child from employed
mother were significantly more likely to have less z score of underweight, stunting and wasting
compared to their corresponding counterparts in the study area. A child from lowest living
standard household was significantly lower z score of wasting and underweight; a child who
was feeding less frequently per day was significantly lower mean z score of stunting and
underweight in the study area. Community based nutrition program should be established;
continuous nutrition supervision based on each nutritional status indicators and special
attention to severely malnourished children is necessary to attempt the problem of
malnutrition.
