Nutritional Status of Under- five Children in Hawassa Zuria District, Southern Ethiopia

Almost, half of the under five children in Ethiopia are malnourished. The objective of this study was to estimate and identify determinants of nutritional status among under-five children in Hawassa Zuria District Southern Ethiopia. This survey was conducted by house to house visit through two-stage sampling using community based cross-sectional study design in 6 randomly selected kebeles during April 15-30, 2011. 721 children in total, aged 6-59 months old were studied to assess nutritional status in terms of stunting, wasting, and underweight. Socio-economic, health related and demographic measures were obtained from structured questionnaire. Also, anthropometric measurements were taken from each child in the study. Binary and multinomial logistic regressions were used to relate underlying factors to the adjusted odds of malnutrition indices. The results indicated that the overall prevalence of stunting, underweight, and wasting were 45.8 %, 31.9 %, and 23.6%, respectively. Female children were more stunted, under weight and wasted relative to males (OR = 1.67, 0.600 and 1.47), respectively. Children who had uneducated mothers were significantly more likely to be moderately underweight as compared to those of whose mothers had secondary and above educational level (OR= 0.35, CI: 0.16–0.79). Nutritional status in the study area among study population was categorized in low levels. However, planning the public preventive strategies in the district can help to control under-nutrition based on underlying factors of in the study population including, maternal education, maternal pre-natal health care services, toilet facility, child health care services and safe water supply