Prevelance of malnutrition among Chiru children of Manipur India

Abstract

The present study describes the nutritional status of 4 to 12 year-old Chiru children of Manipur, India evaluated with the help of anthropometric measurements. The Chiru is one of the 33 Scheduled tribes of Manipur. The study is based on height and weight of 322 children among whom 172 were boys and 150 girls. It also aims to throw light on different conventional methods of nutritional assessment based on height and weight and their varied results. The Chiru children are shorter in height and lighter in body weight as compared to the NCHS (National Centre for Health Statistics) and ICMR data on Indian children in all the age groups. According to Waterlow’s classification of height for age, about 51% of the Chiru boys and girls are below -2SD score, whereas according to Gomez’s classification of weight for age shows that 31.37%, 49.69% and 15.53% fall under mild, moderate and severe malnourished, respectively categories. Waterlow’s classification of weight for height depicts 70.50% of the children as normal.