Impact of Health Promoting Nutrition Intervention Package on Severe Malnutrition among Under-Five Children in Rural Northern India

Poonam Khanna¹, Tejinder P. Singh², Rajbir Kaur¹, Jill Miller³, Thakur Mejie⁴, Sonia Minhas¹, Jyoti¹, Manoj Sharma⁵

¹Department of Community Medicine and School of Public Health, Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research, Chandigarh, India.

²Division of Public Health, Department of Family and Preventive Medicine University of Utah, Salt Lake City, United States.

³MPH from Division of Public Health, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, US.

⁴Mehar Baba Charitable Trust Fatehgarh Sahib, Punjab, India.

⁵Department of Behavioral and Environmental Health, School of Public Health, Jackson State University, Jackson, Mississippi.

Corresponding Author Email: poonamkhanna05@gmail.com

Globally, 17 million children under 5 years of age are affected with severe malnutrition. Severe wasting is a key contributor (12.6%) to child deaths due to nutritional deficiencies and is responsible for several morbid conditions. The purpose of this paper was to assess the impact of nutritional counseling intervention on severe malnutrition among rural under-five children in Northern India. Nine villages in an ongoing project were included in the study to include all the under-five children (N=573) from these villages. Nutritional assessment was performed as per World Health Organization (WHO) child growth standards. Based on their z-scores of malnourishment indicators, children affected with severe malnutrition were included for customized health promoting nutritional intervention, other than the regular nutrition counseling sessions for all malnourished under-five children. Post nutrition counseling changes in anthropometric measurements were recorded at an interval of 6 months. Significant changes were observed in mean z- scores before and after nutrition intervention that declined from -3.05 to -1.81 and -3.16 to -2.25 for weight for height (WHZ) and weight for age (WAZ), respectively. The results showed that the intervention was effective in community-based management of severe malnutrition among children in rural Northern India.

Severe Malnutrition; Anthropometric Measurement; Nutritional Counseling; Under-Five Children

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