Comparative study on nutritional status of under Five children with employment status of mothers in Adama town, central Ethiopia 2013

Abstract

Background: Malnutrition remains among the most devastating problems currently being faced by the majority of the world’s poor. As of many developing countries malnutrition is one of the most important health and welfare problems among infants and young children in Ethiopia, A complex set of factors cause malnutrition. Inadequate and/or inappropriate dietary intake and infectious diseases are the immediate/direct causes which in turn are related to a number of socio-economic, demographic, child-care, and environmental factors among these factors one is women’s employment which has both negative and positive effects on nutritional status of children. There is conflicting information on the effect of maternal employment on child nutritional status. Objectives: To determine the effect of maternal employment status on nutritional status of 6-59 month-old children in Adama town Methods: Community based comparative cross-sectional study design was used. A multistage sampling technique was used to draw a sample of 319 non-employed mothers and 319 employed mothers, A total of 638 study participants were included and interviewed using a structured, pre tested questionnaire. Anthropometric measurements were taken using standard procedures and appropriate quality control measures. Height/length and weight of children was converted to Zscore of height for age, weight for height and weight for age by using WHO anthro software, the zscore indices were calculated using WHO 2007 growth reference. The data was entered using Epi Data version 3.5.1 and analyzed using SPSS version 16. Result: The prevalence of stunting, underweight and wasting was found to be 33.8%, 12.6% and 8.3% respectively. The result of this study showed that the overall nutritional status of children of employed mothers is significantly better than that of children of non employed mothers, with AOR (95%CI) for stunting 3.12(1.42, 6.83) ,underweight 3.06(1.61,5.83) and wasting 3.12(1.42,6.83). Conclusion and recommendation: The result of this study showed that there was statistically significant difference in child nutritional status (stunting, underweight and wasting) among children of employed and non-employed mothers. Concerted efforts should be made to greatly decrease the number of malnourished children, by educating and motivating the public, empowering women through education and other affirmative action.