Browsing by Author "Blummé, Fanny"

Malnutrition is one of the worlds biggest health problems. It is associated with 45 percent of deaths among children under 5 years. Malnutrition causes health and financial problems addition to the loss of lives. Children’s undernutrition can manifest itself in different forms, of which stunting is the most common. The other forms are underweight, wasting and micronutrient deficiencies. Stunting is defined as low height-for-age. Children are stunted if their height-for-age is more than two standard deviation below the WHO Child Growth Standards median. Stunting is normally associated with chronic malnutrition. Poor nutrition during the first years of life have been linked to many long-term consequences. These are increased morbidity, impaired growth and poor cognition which leads to lost productivity and poverty later in life. The focus of this study is to find factors associated with stunting, to analyse the difference in stunting between the girls and boys and to find possible reasons for it. This thesis is a cross-sectional study from a material collected in Benin ’Enhancing food and nutrition security of vulnerable groups in communities in Benin through increased use of local agricultural biodiversity’ which is a part of a larger ’Improving Food Security in West and East Africa through Capasity Building in Research and Information Dissemination’ (FoodAfrica) project funded by the ministry for foreign affairs of Finland. Benin has 11.8 million inhabitants. Benin is ranked 165 on the Human Development Index. Almost half of the population lives with less than 1.25 USD a day, which is the International Poverty Line. There were 1263 children involved in this study. They were measured (height, weight and upper arm circumference) and their guardian was interviewed. The field part of the study was done by the local Biodiversity International and Abomey Calavin university researchers and data collectors trained by the same. All the children between the ages 6 and 23 months from the chosen villages were selected to the study if they filled the following criteria: the child was given complementary foods, they were not suffering from a severe illness, the family had lived in the region for the last two years and had no plans to move away during the next year. If the family had more than one child with the appropriate age the youngest one was chosen to the study. Participation in the study was voluntary. 26,4 percent of the children in this study were stunted and it was more common with the boys. 30,1 percent of the boys were stunted compared with 22,4 percent of the girls. All the children in this study were short and the average hight was -1,36 on the WHO Child Growth Standards. Many factors were associated with stunting: mothers education (p=0.017), fathers education (p=0.019), feeds other than breast milk during the first 3 days of its life (p=0.003), duration of exclusive breastfeeding (p=0.005), timing of initiation of complementary feeding (p=0.008), source of water used for washing hands before feeding the child (p=0.01) and source of drinking water (p=0.01). After all the factors associated with stunting had been considered using regression analysis the following retained significance: mother’s height (p<0.0001), child’s birth weight (p=0.001) and the consumption of nuts (p=0.003). The findings in this study are similar to previous studies. Mother’s short height and child’s low birth weight are both indicators of maternal undernutrition. Thus securing girl’s optimal growth and improving the nutritional status of women in reproductive age should be the focus of future interventions. After the linear stepwise regression, the type of toilet used was still significant for boys and the length of breastfeeding for all children, but these were not significant after the logistic stepwise regression. Reasons for the difference in stunting between the boys and the girls were not found. Possible reasons include genetic qualities and differences in how boys and girls are treated, but this remains to be resolved.