Anandu R¹*, Anju US¹, Beena John¹, Manju M¹, Preetha KR¹, Reshma KT¹, Sharon Wilson¹, Sreethu R¹ and Asha KV²

¹Post Basic BSc Nursing Students, India
²Assistant Professor, Government College of Nursing, Kottayam, India

*Corresponding Author: Anandu R, Post Basic BSc Nursing Students, India.

Received: July 06, 2023; Published: August 04, 2023

Abstract

Protein energy malnutrition (PEM) is a widespread nutritional disease in the developing countries. The present study was intended to assess the prevalance and decisive factors of protein energy malnutrition among children of age group between 1-5 years attending Pediatric department of a tertiary level hospital at Thiruvananthapuram. The objectives of the study were to identify the prevalence of protein energy malnutrition among children between the age group of 1-5 years and to find out the decisive factors leading to PEM. The research approach adopted for the study was quantitative approach and research design was descriptive cross sectional method.

The present study was conducted among 150 children belonging to the age group of 1-5 years of age attending Pediatric department, SAT Hospital, Thiruvananthapuram. The participants were selected by purposive sampling method. Structured interview and anthropometric measurements were used to collect data. The collected data were analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics. It was found that 38% of the sample were affected with protein energy malnutrition among which 25.3% have Grade 1 PEM, 7.3% have Grade 2 PEM, 4.6% have Grade 3 PEM, and 0.6% have Grade 4 PEM. There is significant association between PEM and birth weight, timing of weaning, exclusive breast feeding upto 6 months, continuation of breast feeding upto 2 years, two or more episodes of respiratory infection in a year and dietary pattern.

 Keywords: Protein Energy Malnutrition; Children; Decisive Factors

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Citation

Citation: Anandu R., et al. “Prevalence and Decisive Factors of Protein Energy Malnutrition Among Children between 1-5 Years of Age". Acta Scientific Women's Health 5.9 (2023): 03-08.

Copyright

Copyright: © 2023 Anandu R., et al. 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.