Abstract

Background: Malnutrition is considered a major challenge in the area of public health nutrition. But recently the clear footprints have been spotted by researchers at remarkable magnitude even in the developing as well as developed countries. National studies to predict Malnutrition prevalence in Saudi Arabia are lacking. To date no study has been conducted to find out prevalence of Malnutrition in the 2^nd holiest city of Muslims Al Madinah Al Munawarrah located on western part of Saudi Arabia.

Objectives: This study aimed to evaluate the prevalence of Malnutrition in school children of Madinah Al Munawarrah-Saudi Arabia.

Methods: Participants were healthy school boys and girls aged 05 - 18 years. It was a cross-sectional stratified study. Total sample size was 6000 consisting of 3000 boys and 3000 girls Twenty (20) schools were selected with random stratification with the help of Ministry of education. Data were collected during April - December 2017. Height and weight of children were measured to calculate percentiles for BMI-for-age and -sex according to the 2000 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) growth charts. Acute Malnutrition was defined as BMI-for-age/sex < 5^th % tile.

Results:

Acute malnutrition: The overall children who were suffering from Acute Malnutrition were 19% (n = 755). Prevalence in boys was 24% (n = 529) and in girls was 13% (n = 226).

For boys: The presence of Acute Malnutrition in Category-I (5 - 8 years) was 25% (n = 8), category-II (9 - 13 years) was 23% (n = 149) and Category-III (14 - 18 years) was 24% (n = 372).

For girls: The prevalence in Category-I (5 - 8 years) was 41% (n = 45), category-II (9 - 13 years) was 13% (n = 79) and Category-III (14 - 18 years) was 10% (n = 102).

Conclusion: Malnutrition in school children in Al Madinah Al Munawarrah prevails as high as in few under developed countries. Integrated Intervention and prevention programs in primary through high school should focus at all school-aged children especially primary school students. Ministry of education and Ministry of health have a key role. Dietitians and public health nutrition care workers are potential key role players to effectively address this issue.

Keywords: Malnutrition; Obesity; Climate; Saudi Arabia

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Citation

Citation: Atta UR Rehman Khan and Meshal Al Malki. “Malnutrition Trends in School Children of Madinah Al Munawarrah-A Cross-Sectional study".Acta Scientific Nutritional Health 4.10 (2020): 44-49.

Copyright

Copyright: © 2020 Atta UR Rehman Khan and Meshal Al Malki. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.