Factors Contributing To Childhood Malnutrition Among Children Under Five Years In Alere Refugee Camp,Adjuman District

Abstract

ABSTRACT Background:Nutrition is an important public health intervention for children below the age of five years for any one developing country. In Uganda particularly, malnutrition remains a big threat to almost all regions in Uganda particularly in the West Nile belt part of Uganda (Corbett et al, 2010). Objective:The study assessed the factors contributing to childhood malnutrition among under 5 years children in Alere refugee camp, Adjumani district. Methodology:A descriptive cross-sectional study design was used and both quantitative and quantitative data was collected from 195 caregivers in Alere refugee settlement camp, Adjumani district using researcher administered semi-structured questionnaires and systematic sampling was used to select households for the study. Data was cleaned in Excel and exported to SPSS where analysis was done using univariate and bivariate procedures. Results were then presented in figures and tables and interpretations were made. Results: The majority of the children lay within less than 3 Standard Deviation and there were minor cases of severe acute malnutrition among the studied population. Bivariate analysis revealed that the factors that had an association with malnutrition were age of mother (X2=12.732, P-0.001), education level of mother (X2=9.931, P-0.016), and marital status of the mother (X2=11.632, P-0.003). Results showed that the factors found to have significant association were breastfeeding (X2=9.023, P-0.043) and complementary feeding (X2=10.382, P-0.004). Conclusion: Severe acute malnutrition among the children was low. The factors identified to influence severe acute malnutrition were low awareness on food preparation especially among children aged between 12 to 24 years when they are weaned.