Anthropometric Assessment of the Nutritional Status of Children Under Five Years Old in Nouakchott, Mauritania.

EasyChair Preprint 9307

Abstract

In Mauritania, as in many developing countries, malnutrition in children under five is a public health problem. One of the strategies for preventing and combating this scourge is the early anthropometric assessment of nutritional status.

Child malnutrition is conventionally assessed by three indicators of nutritional status made up of anthropometric measurement indices, namely wasting (weight/height), stunting (height/age) and underweight (weight/height). age). However, these indicators are criticized for underestimating the prevalence of malnutrition because they overlap.

The main objective of our study is to assess the nutritional status of children through these aforementioned indices using MICS 2015-2016 data from Mauritania.

The results show that of all the children studied (8927): *50.50% are boys, 49.50% are girls;

* 43.71% reside in urban areas and 56.29% in rural areas;

* The average age of the children is 31.9 months ± 15.5 months;

* average size is 86.8cm±11.9cm;

* the average weight is 11.35 kg ± 2.95 kg.

Thus we deduce that malnutrition in Mauritanian children is characterized by prevalence of 29.58% stunting, 25.81% underweight and 14.91% emaciation. Regarding the correlations of malnutrition with risk factors, we noted that the prevalence of child malnutrition is significantly related to age and area of ​​residence, while the male and female sex of the children surveyed was higher in the middle. rural than in urban areas. The age and level of education of mothers play a key role in child malnutrition.

Based on our results, we propose a series of economic and social policy measures that would take into account all of these factors and contribute to improving the nutritional status of children aged 0 to 5 in Mauritania.

Keyphrases: Anthropometric indices, Malnutrition, Mauritania., Nouakchott, Nutritional statuts, children

@booklet{EasyChair:9307,
  author    = {Sima Boulabatt and Abdellahi Nasser and Youssef Elghrifi and Ahmed Feil and Mourad Benbouazza and Mohamed Lemine Cheikh Brahim Ahmed and Ahmed Elbara and Khadija El Kharrim and Driss Belghyti},
  title     = {Anthropometric Assessment of the Nutritional Status of Children Under Five Years Old in Nouakchott, Mauritania.},
  howpublished = {EasyChair Preprint 9307},
  year      = {EasyChair, 2022}}