Study of impact of sociocultural and economic factors of mothers on the nutritional status of their malnourished children in a rural area of Delhi, India
Background: Even after following the multi-strategy approach of Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) in India for the last four decades, reducing malnutrition among children below 6 years has turned out to be a herculean task, because of the poor focus by Anganwadi workers (AWWs) on empowe...
| Main Authors: | , , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia
2015
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| Online Access: | http://journalarticle.ukm.my/8763/ http://journalarticle.ukm.my/8763/ http://journalarticle.ukm.my/8763/1/P.162-167.pdf |
| Summary: | Background: Even after following the multi-strategy approach of Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) in India for
the last four decades, reducing malnutrition among children below 6 years has turned out to be a herculean task, because of
the poor focus by Anganwadi workers (AWWs) on empowering community to manage malnutrition among the children at
home level. Therefore, it becomes necessary to assess the role of the mothers in managing malnutrition in their children.
Objectives: To study the impact of sociocultural and economic factors of mothers on the nutritional status of their
malnourished children in a rural area of Delhi, India.
Materials and Methods: The study was conducted for a 6-month duration (July–December 2013) in a rural ICDS block
(Narela) of Delhi. The 80 mothers of both the healthy and malnourished children (40 mothers in each group) were
interviewed in depth via semi-structured interview schedule; and all these mothers were separately studied further by focus
group discussion technique to explore their beliefs, opinions, and practices on malnutrition management in their children.
All the collected data were finally triangulated and analyzed after applying w2-test from SPSS, version 22.0.
Results: The main reasons behind inadequate efforts made by mothers in nutritional management of their children were
the following: sporadic nutrition and health education given by AWWs at Anganwadi centers (AWCs) and homes to mothers
leading to a lack of nutritional knowledge (p o 0.05) and inadequate treatment-seeking behavior toward malnourished
children (47.5%) and the poverty causing mothers to work outside home (p o 0.05).
Conclusion: AWWs need to focus urgently on their proper nutritional and health educational activities for mothers of
malnourished children, regarding key messages on proper child-feeding practices and also the concerned government
needs to provide more income opportunities to fathers of such children along with a targeted Public Distribution System. |
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