Contextual risk factors for maternal malnutrition in a food-insecure zone in southern Ethiopia.
This study examined the nutritional status of mothers in one of the most populous food-insecure zones in southern Ethiopia, the Sidama zone. The study used primary data collected from 1094 households with a child under 24 months located in ten kebeles (the smallest administrative district). Households were selected using multi-stage probability sampling techniques. The mothers' nutritional status was estimated using both body mass index (BMI) and mid-upper-arm circumference (MUAC). The results from the BMI analysis revealed that 28.1% of the women were malnourished (BMI <18.5) and 67.5% were normal (BMI 18.5 to <25.0), while the remaining small proportion (4.5%) fell in the overweight or obese categories. Similarly, the computation of maternal nutritional status by MUAC analysis showed that 31.4% of the women were malnourished (MUAC <22). Further analysis of the main predictors of maternal malnutrition using logistic regression showed that three individual-level variables and three household-level variables predicted maternal malnutrition: woman's age, duration of breast-feeding, literacy status, marital form, land size and intra-household food distribution. The study concludes that maternal malnutrition is a serious problem in the study area and that there are contextual risk factors that could be addressed to partially tackle the problem.
Hawassa University, Department of Rural Development and Family Sciences, Hawassa, SNNPR, Ethiopia.
Nigatu
N
Regassa
Barbara J
BJ
Stoecker
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000367:Age Factors; D015992:Body Mass Index; D005002:Ethiopia / Q000453:epidemiology; D005260:Female; D005523:Food Supply; D006801:Humans; D016015:Logistic Models; D044342:Malnutrition / Q000453:epidemiology*; D009752:Nutritional Status; D012307:Risk Factors; D012494:Sampling Studies; D055815:Young Adult