Nutritional status and prevalence of anemia in rural adolescents

INTRODUCTION: Adolescence is a period of transition between childhood and adulthood. This eriod occupies a crucial position in the life of human beings on account of major physical, sexual and psychological changes. This period is characterized by an exceptionally rapid rate of physical and sexual growth. The peak rates of physical growth are exceeded only during the fetal life and early infancy. There is not much individual variation in the growth during the fetal life and infancy. In contrast there is much more individual variation both in timing and in the degree of growth during adolescent period. This has importance in defining normality. OBJECTIVES: 1. To assess the nutritional status of the adolescent community residing in rural block. 2. To assess the prevalence of anemia among these adolescents. METHODS: Study Design: Community based cross sectional survey. Place of Study: Institute of child health and Hospital for Children, Egmore, Chennai-8. Study Period : October 2004 to March 2006. Study Population: Inclusion Criteria: 1. 10 years to 19 years of both sexes (as per W.H.O guidelines). 2. Residents of that area. 3. Those with valid date of birth. Exclusion criteria: 1. Migrating population. SAMPLLING FRAME: Sample District: Thiruvallur District. Sample Area: Poonamallee block. Total population in that area 2,05,380. Total no. of adolescent population 42,000. No. of Villages : 90. Sample size : Based on the previous study by K.Anand et al. prevalence rate of anemia (40%) and prevalence rate of under nourished (37.3%)sample size was calculated as 1600 with the standard error of 5%. Since it is community based study Designer effect of two was considered. Hence the sample size is 3200. Sample collected : 4067. Sampling technique: Systematic random Sampling STATISTICAL ANALYSIS: All results were tabulated and percentage was arrived by using windows MS Excel application and analysis was performed by using SPSS version 11.0- Software. Descriptive statistics like frequencies and percentages were obtained. 95% confidence interval for the percentages was calculated. Chi-square test was done to compare between various groups. P value less than 0.05% was considered significant. STUDY JUSTIFICATION: Adolescents constitute almost one fifth of world population. In developing countries like India, the adolescents constituting one fourth of population are not given the due importance in terms of resource allocation on health care or research. Though adolescence is a period of rapid body growth, inadequate nutrition, poverty and literacy constitute greatly to thin malnourished adolescents. Heightened sexual drive, sexual urge and sexual experimentation lead on to the teen-aged pregnancies and illegal abortions. Early marriages of these thin adolescents results in prematurity, low birth weight babies with high neonatal mortality. This vicious cycle has not been truly recognized in view of lopsided research among the urban adolescents only. Exposure to hitech knowledge, per capita income and availability of health care personals especially those belonging to the middle and higher socioeconomic status in the urban areas make much difference between urban and rural adolescents. Studies done in urban areas have concentrated on these children only. Thus painting a lopsided picture of adolescent’s health and nutritional status is not truly reflective of ground realities. This study was planned with the aim of gathering basic nutritional data among rural adolescents in order to project the nutritional needs to the health planners. CONCLUSION: • Under nutrition was found to be a significant problem in both sexes of rural adolescents. • Late adolescents were more undernourished in both sexes. • Under nutrition was more common in boys than in girls • Obesity was not at all a problem among rural adolescents in both sexes. • Anemia was more common in female than in male in both school going and non-school going. • Anemia was more common in non-school going than in school going in both sexes. • Severe anemia was more common in female of non-school going group.