Determinants of stunting and severe stunting among under-fives : evidence from the 2011 Nepal Demographic and Health Survey

Rina Tiwari, Lynne M. Ausman, Kingsley Emwinyore Agho

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

    130 Citations (Scopus)

    Abstract

    Background: Stunting remains a major public health concern in Nepal as it increases the risk of illness, irreversible body damage and mortality in children. Public health planners can reshape and redesign new interventions to reduce stunting and severe stunting among children aged less than 5 years in this country by examining their determinants. Hence, this study identifies factors associated with stunting and severe stunting among children aged less than five years in Nepal. Methods: The sample is made up of 2380 children aged 0 to 59 months with complete anthropometric measurements from the 2011 Nepal Demographic and Health Survey (NDHS). Simple and multiple logistic regression analyses were used to examine stunting and severe stunting against a set of variables. Results: The prevalences of stunting and severe stunting were 26.3% [95% confidence Interval (CI): 22.8, 30.1] and 10.2% (95%CI: 7.9, 13.1) for children aged 0–23 months, respectively, and 40.6 (95%CI: 37.3, 43.2) and 15.9% (95%CI: 13.9, 18.3) for those aged 0–59 months, respectively. After adjusting for potential confounding factors, multivariable analyses showed that the most consistent significant risk factors for stunted and severely stunted children aged 0–23 and 0–59 months were household wealth index (poorest household), perceived size of baby (small babies) and breastfeeding for more than 12 months (adjusted odds ratio (AOR) for stunted children aged 0–23 months = 2.60 [95% CI: (1.87, 4.02)]; AOR for severely stunted children aged 0–23 months = 2.87 [95% CI: (1.54, 5.34)]; AOR for stunted children aged 0–59 months = 3.54 [95% CI: (2.41, 5.19)] and AOR for severely stunted children aged 0–59 months = 4.15 [95% CI: (2.45, 6.93)]. Conclusions: This study suggests that poorest households and prolonged breastfeeding (more than 12 months) led to increased risk of stunting and severe stunting among Nepalese children. However, community-based education intervention are needed to reduce preventable deaths triggered by malnutrition in Nepal and should target children born to mothers of low socioeconomic status.
    Original languageEnglish
    Article number239
    Number of pages15
    JournalBMC Pediatrics
    Volume14
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 2014

    Open Access - Access Right Statement

    © 2014 Tiwari et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.

    Keywords

    • Nepal
    • children
    • growth, stunted

    Fingerprint

    Dive into the research topics of 'Determinants of stunting and severe stunting among under-fives : evidence from the 2011 Nepal Demographic and Health Survey'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

    Cite this