Nutritional status and associated factors among primary school children of pastoral and agro-pastoral Communities of Meiso woreda, Shinile Zone, Somali Regional State, Ethiopia.

Abstract

Introduction: Globally, malnutrition among school children is becoming a major public health concern. More than 200 million school children are stunted and if no action is taken, about 1 billion stunted school children will be growing up by 2020 with impaired physical and mental development. Objectives: To assess and compare nutritional status and its associated factors among primary school children of pastoral and agro-pastoral communities. Methods: School based comparative cross sectional study was conducted in pastoral and agropastoral community schools of Meiso woreda on 655 primary school students using multistage sampling. Data were collected by pre-tested structured questionnaire and anthropometric measurements height and weight. Binary logistic regression was used to examine candidate variables for multivariable analyses. Multivariable analysis was done to determine independent predictors of stunting and wasting. Adjusted Odds ratio (OR) with 95% CI was used to show the strength of association. Result: The prevalence of stunting was higher in agro-pastoral (14.5%) than pastoral (8.3%) communities. Meanwhile the prevalence of thinness was higher in pastoral community than agro-pastoral which was 26.2% and 19.6%, respectively. The overall prevalence of stunting and wasting was 11.5% and 22.6%. On multivariable logestic regression model, Stunting was significantly associated with place of residence, sex, age, family size, source of drinking water, wealth tertiles and adolescent food insecurity. Family size, the source of drinking water, availability of latrine, household wealth tertiles, hand washing with soap after toilet, diarrhea illness and adolescent food insecurity were significantly associated with wasting. Conclusion: Generally, the study revealed the prevalence of stunting was significantly higher in agro-pastoral than pastoral community adolescents and the prevalence of wasting was higher in pastoral than agro-pastoral communities. Recommendation: The Somali regional state health bureau and Meiso woreda health office should design intervention which targets adolescents’ malnutrition specific to pastoralist and agro-pastoral livelihood systems