Abstract:
Background: Undernutrition makes the child more vulnerable to morbidity and mortality and
has been linked to delayed mental development, poorer educational attainment and lower
intellectual and physical abilities in adult life. There is limited community based evidence on
under nutrition and factors associated in the study area, the majority of the previous local studies
focused on investigating chronic malnutrition only and uses school based studies approach.
Objective: To assess the prevalence of under nutrition and associated factors among children
aged 5-14 years in Haramaya District Demographic and Health Survey and Surveillance System
Haramya University, Eastern Ethiopia from June 30 to July 15, 2020
Method: Community based cross sectional study was conducted among 815 randomly selected
children aged 5-14 years. The height and weight of the study subjects were measured via
anthropometric measurements. Data was entered and cleaned using Epi-data version 3.1 and
exported by STATA 14. 2 version for analysis. Height-for-age Z-score (HAZ) and BMI-for-age
Z-scores (BAZ) for children and adolescents were calculated using the WHO Anthro Plus
software version 1.0.4. Bi-variable and multivariable binary logistic regression analyses were
done to see the association between the dependent and independent variable.
Results: The prevalence of stunting and thinness was found to be 22.4% [(95% CI: 19.7, 25.5]
and 11.9% [(95% CI: 9.8, 14.3], respectively. Children being from poor households [AOR
=1.60, 95% CI: 1.05, 2.42],Family size greater than three [AOR =1.71, 95% CI: 1.13, 2.60], and
Dietary diversity score three or less food groups [AOR =1.5, 95% CI: 1.07, 2.13]were
significantly associated withstunting. On the other hand, being in age range of 13-14 [AOR
=2.25, 95% CI: 1.13, 4.47], Family size greater than three [AOR =2.60, 95% CI: 1.34, 5.03] and
Dietary diversity score three or less food groups [AOR = 1.89, 95% CI :1.17, 3.04] were
significantly associated with thinness.
Conclusion: The finding of this study showed that there was high prevalence of stunting and
thinness school children aged from 5-14 years old in Haramaya district. Therefore, all
stakeholders should need to strengthen nutrition interventions that focus on factors affecting the
nutritional status of children
