Nutritional Status of Pre-Schoolers in the Border Areas of Jammu

The nutritional status and overall development of children living in the border areas is affected to a greater extent due to restricted movements and lack of food during armed conflicts. Quality nutrition remains a distant dream for children residing in such areas due to lack of care and nourishment in their routine. Total number of 130 children aged 3-6 years were selected from border areas of R.S Pura (65) and Kathua (65), Jammu. Information regarding the socio-demographic profile, feeding practices and impact of armed conflicts on affordability, accessibility and availability of food was collected from mothers who voluntarily agreed to participate. Nutritional status was assessed by computing weight for age, height for age and B.M.I for age as per z-scores and percentiles by W.H.O. Data was entered into SPSS software version 23.0. Chisquare test was used for testing relationships between categorical variables, Pearson correlation to measure strength of linear association between two variables along with t-test to find mean differences between variables. Children of R.S Pura had better diet diversity scores (4.89 ± 1.10) compared to Kathua (4.32 ± 0.812) as majority of the father’s were employed in government sector in R.S Pura (66.2%) and ration was provided during period of turmoil by government authorities. t-test revealed children to be normal for HAZ (-1.82 ± 1.520, -0.42± 2.150), WAZ (-0.05 ± 1.763, 0.62 ± 1.497) in both R.S Pura and Kathua however as per BMZ for age children were at a risk for being overweight in R.S Pura (1.86 ± 1.248) compared to normal children in Kathua (0.95 ± 1.430).Weaning was found to be statistically significant and 65.6% children were weaned at an appropriate age in R.S pura compared to 34.3% in Kathua.