Mahfuzur Rahman and Papia Sultana
Background: Malnutrition is the root causes of morbidity and mortality amongst pre-school and school going children in Bangladesh. In addition, malnutrition not only affects individuals but its effects are passed from generation to generation. Hence, the study aimed to investigate the latest nutritional status of under-five children and identify the risk factors of child malnutrition in Bangladesh using Bangladesh Demographic and Health Survey-2014 along with its distribution and composition.
Data and methodology: The data used for the present study has been derived from Bangladesh Demographic and Health Survey (BDHS-2014). Sample of size 6965 has been used in this study extracted from 7886 kids’ record of BDHS-2014 with information on height and weight. Descriptive analysis has been performed to know the characteristics of the study subjects. Distribution of the z-scores is investigated, too. Then nutritional status has been clustered to gender, residence and division. And finally, binary logistic regression analysis has been used to identify influential factors that are significant to child malnutrition.
Results: It has been found that 12.20% of under-five children are severely stunted and 24.91% are moderately stunted. It has been also found that 3.19% of under-five children are severely wasted, 11.74% are moderately wasted, 8.34% are severely underweighted and 24.69% are moderately underweighted. The malnutrition status (stunted) does not differ significantly to gender (p-value=0.239), but does significantly differ to residence (pvalue<0.001) and to division (p-value<0.001). When adjusted to all the factors, children of age group 18-23 months are significantly and about 7 times more likely to be stunted than children of less than 6 months age (adjusted odds ratio, AOR= 6.72, 95% confidence interval (CI)=4.94, 9.14). It has been found that Female children are less likely to be stunted than male (AOR=0.89, 95% CI=0.80, 0.99). Birth interval less than 24 months is another correlates of child malnutrition (AOR=1.37, 95% CI=1.10, 1.70). Underweighted mothers are more likely to have stunted child. Children of educated parents are less likely to be stunted. Children of Sylhet division are most likely to be stunted. Children of rural areas are 16% less likely to be stunted than urban area (AOR=0.84, 95% CI=0.74, 0.96). Children of richest families are 60% less likely to be stunted than poorest group (AOR=0.40, 95% CI=0.32, 0.50). However, job of parents is not found to have significant association with nutritional status of under-five children in Bangladesh.
Conclusion: In conclusion, it can be said that increasing educational facilities for mothers and fathers can improve the child nutrition. Government and policymakers may take comprehensive and concrete challenge to overcome wealth inequities. Therefore, immediate actions are required to address all these issues to improve the nutritional status of children in Bangladesh.
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