title: Nutritional status of pre-school children in an integrated child development service (ICDS) block of Chandigarh.
abstract: Nutritional status of 1286 pre-school children selected by a stratified random sampling and residing in urban, rural and slum areas of Chandigarh was assessed by weight for age criteria by making domicilliary visits. The overall prevalence of protein energy mulnutrition (PEM) was found to be 51.6% while 65.4%, 26.3%, 5.3% and 3% of children had grades I, II, II and IV PEM, respectively. The prevalence of malnutrition significantly increased with increase in age till 3rd year, then started declining (P<0.001). The prevalence of PEMwas significantly higher among Integrated Child Development Service (ICDS) beneficiaries (53.8%) than non-ICDS beneficiaries (46.9%); P<0.05. More attention and better impetus are required to be given to improve the nutritional status of pre-school children in Chandigarh.
authors.affiliation: Department of Community Medicine, Government Medical College, Chandigarh.
authors.forename: H M
authors.initials: HM
authors.lastname: Swami
authors.forename: J S
authors.initials: JS
authors.lastname: Thakur
authors.forename: S P
authors.initials: SP
authors.lastname: Bhatia
authors.forename: V
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Bhatia
mesh_terms: D002662:Child Health Services / Q000458:organization & administration*; D002664:Child Nutritional Physiological Phenomena; D002675:Child, Preschool; D006801:Humans; D007194:India / Q000453:epidemiology; D007223:Infant; D007231:Infant, Newborn; D009752:Nutritional Status; D015995:Prevalence; D011502:Protein-Energy Malnutrition / Q000453:epidemiology* / Q000473:pathology; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors