Malnutrition among children under-five in Uganda: burden, causes and prospects in Karamoja Region

Abstract

Malnutrition remains a global health problem and policy challenge especially for Sub Sahara African countries including Uganda. Children are majorly vulnerable since their growth and development depends on adequate nutritional intake. According to WHO (2013), there are 178 million children that are malnourished across the globe and at any given moment, 20 million are suffering from the most severe form of malnutrition. On the other hand, SPRING (2014), estimated that approximately 2.3 million children under the age of five are chronically malnourished in Uganda and the shortage of professional health workers and lack of access to health care services makes the situation even worse. It further revealed that children aged between 6-59 month living within Karamoja region with anemia were standing at 69.5% compared to the national target 50.0%, stunting under-five stood at 45% compared to the national target of 32%, underweight for children under-five was at 31.9% compared to national target of 10.0% therefore, the region has highest level of malnutrition prevalence in country compared to other regions. Causes of malnutrition are believed to be multifaceted, ranging from inadequate dietary intake and infections to socio- economic and environment factors. Methodology; Mixed method with descriptive survey design was adopted and 236 Children aged 0-59 month were assessed. Additional information was collected by interviewing 176 biological and caregiver using simple random sampling. Anthropometric measurements and structured questionnaires were used. Data was processed using Open Data Kit (ODK) and exported to Stata software for analysis. Then after, sex, age, height, and weight transferred with HHs number to ENA for SMART 2007 software to convert nutritional data into Z-scores of the indices; Height-for-age, weight-for-height and weight-for-age. Multivariate logistic regression was used to identify associated factors of malnutrition. The results from the survey study revealed that; 13.4%, 26.8% and 33.2% of children were wasted, underweight and stunted respectively. The severity of underweight was more prevalent in children aged between 30-59 month with 26.0% whereas stunting stood at 35.5% among the children aged 18-41 months. In addition, severe underweight, stunting and wasting was more prevalent in boys compared to girls. The main associated factors of stunting were found to be child age, breastfeeding practices while underweight was associated with food insecurity among others. This abstract paper therefore examines the factors influencing persistent malnutrition among children under-five years in Karamoja region