Body Mass Index and Chronic Energy Deficiency among Adult Santals of Purulia District, West Bengal, India.

Abstract

The present community based cross-sectional study was undertaken to determine the overall prevalance of undernutrition using BMI (kg/m2) among the Santal adult tribes of  Purulia District, West Bengal, India. Present study is based on the data of height and weight of adults aged 18 years and above from 10 villages of Purulia. A total of 513 (196 males and 317 females) adults aged 18 years and above were measured. One commonly used indicator i.e., BMI were used to evaluate the nutritional status of the subjects. Females were found more underweight than their male counterpart (30.6%) & (63.4%), which is found to be significant (p < 0.001). There is highly significant gender differences in CED (x2= 55.96a; df= 4; p< 0.001). Tribal females of west Bengal were in highly critical situation than other states of the same country (64.2%). Valuable health and nutritional promotion programs can be formulated based on these findings of such researches with the ultimate objective of reducing overall nutritional problem in a population.