vaabClass schedule

Materials and Methods

childhood morbidity and mortality. The objectives of this study are to explore the
levels and trends in malnutrition of Bangladeshi children aged under-5 years and
reveal their overall nutritional status using a comparison between anthropometric
health indicators. This information should help to reassess the current policies of
child development and plan for significant new interventions to assist the better
health of these children.
Nutritional Status of under-5 Children in Bangladesh 5
(-0.94) with a standard deviation (0.93) very close to the NCHS reference population
standard deviation (SD). The mean values of Z-scores for height-for-age and weightfor-
age indices are found to be slightly higher than -2 Z-score with high standard
deviations. Therefore, average value of Z-scores for Bangladeshi children is nearly 2
Z-score below the reference population mean value zero.
Table 1 shows nutritional status of children by three anthropometric indicators:
stunting, wasting and underweight. Results reveal that nearly half of the preschool
children in Bangladesh are living with underweight and one in three children (34%)
is moderately undernourished. The prevalence of stunting in children was 44%, of
whom 18% were observed to be severely stunted. Moreover, although 90% children
were free from acute malnutrition, 1% and 9% children were severely and
moderately wasted, respectively which add up the total prevalence of wasting in the
high severity prevalence percentage range 10-14 (WHO, 1995).