Nutritional Assessment of School-Age Children Attending Conventional Primary and Integrated Qur'anic Schools in Kaduna

A cross sectional study was conducted to assess the nutritional status of 394 school-age children (7-11years) attending Conventional Primary Schools (CPS) and Integrated Quar’anic Schools (IQS) in Kaduna. The level of stunting was however slightly higher in children attending IQS (9%) than those in CPS but the difference was no significant (p>0.05). Underweight was also generally high (48.7%). Most of the respondents (80.2%) found to be underweight were within the spectrum of mild to moderate «-1 to -2 Z- scores deviation) level and no significant difference (p=0.642>0.05) was found between the school categories. There were more (24.6%) cases of overweight among CPS than IQS (22.0%) children and only 1% level of obesity was recorded. Malaria and helminthes infection was not significantly different (p>0.05) among subjects attending CPS and IQS. The outcome of this work showed no evidence of underlying linear relationship at p= 0.01 when malnutrition was correlated with gender, type of school, rate of school attendance and mothers' educational status but there was a significant correlation between malnutrition and energy intake (p<0.05), and malnutrition and household expenditure on food per month (p<0.05).