Year: 2016
Type: dissertation
Abstract: BackgroundChildhood stunting (i.e.linear growth failure) is recognized to be a major global health priority with 165 million children under the age of five years affected worldwide.Although the prevalence of stunting has decreased over the past years, the number of stunted children is still on the rise.Children of educated mothers have a lower prevalence of stunting in general.There are no consistent results of how well mothers recognize their child's growth failure. AimsThe aim of this study is to determine whether mother's perception of the growth of her child is in line with the measured growth and if mother's education affects the perception. MethodsThis study is a part of a two-center, randomized, single-blind, parallel group controlled trial in rural Malawi called iLiNS-DOSE.It was carried out in Mangochi District, southern Malawi.The study population was N=1119 of 4.8-7.1-month-oldinfants and their mothers.The data used in this study was collected when children entered the iLiNS-DOSE trial and the intervention had not yet taken place.The anthropometric measurements of children were compared to mother's perception retrieved from a "Knowledge, Attitudes and Practices" questionnaire where mothers were asked if their baby is growing well currently.The association between mother's perception and dichotomized child growth (Not stunted, Stunted) was assessed with crosstabulation.Sensitivity and specificity were used to examine the accuracy of detection.The mean values of child growth as continuous length-for-age z-score for both mother's perception groups were compared using independent samples t-test.The association with mother's perception and education was evaluated using Pearson's Chi-Square Test. Results28 % of the children in our study population were stunted.The prevalence differed in relation to mothers' schooling: 32 % of children of uneducated mothers were stunted, 29 % of children of mothers with 1-8 years of schooling and 20 % with 9-12 years of schooling were stunted.The sensitivity of the mothers' assessment was 12 %.Specificity of mothers' assessment was 95 %.There was a statistically significant difference between the mean values of length-for-age z-scores in the two groups of mothers' assessments (growing well; not growing well).6 % of mothers with no schooling detected their stunted children weren't growing well, whereas 2 % in mothers with 9-12 years of schooling detected their child's stunting. ConclusionThe results indicate that mothers detect their child's stunting poorly, although most mothers are accurate when evaluating their not stunted child to grow normally.The group of unschooled mothers detected stunted growth in their children better than the highest education group.This implies that formal education does not significantly improve the detection of stunted growth.The prevalence of stunting is however smaller in children with educated mothers.
Author: Komonen, Riina
Language: English
Subfield: Nutrition and Dietetics
Field: Nursing
Domain: Health Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2521856232