Journal of Community Medicine & Health Education
Open Access

Abstract

Child under-nutrition is a major global health challenge that is implicated in child deaths in developing countries every year and contributes to poor cognitive development. Recent estimates reveal that in Malawi 37% children are stunted, 12% are underweight and 3% are wasted. This paper used the 2000 and 2015 Malawi Demographic and Health Survey data to examine the co-existence of stunting and underweight within a child, identify children that suffer from stunting only and performed a multinomial logistic regression to analyze changes in the determinants of child nutritional status in Malawi. The percentage of children that are stunted reduced from 37.2% in 2000 to 26.8% in 2015. Most children identified as underweight were also stunted: 14.5% in 2000 and 8.8% in 2015, indicating the existence of the double burden of child undernutrition. The following factors were significantly associated with a child�s nutritional status: age, sex, size at birth and household wealth status. Mother education level was only consistently associated with child stunting while mother height, mother weight and having a younger sibling were important associates of the double burden of child undernutrition. Child stunting and the double burden of child undernutrition have declined but remain high. Increased female education especially at secondary or higher level and child spacing are likely to help tackle child undernutrition in Malawi. Replacing the underweight measure by the double burden of undernutrition measure may help with the formulation of appropriate policy interventions to tackle child undernutrition in Malawi and affected countries. Lana.chikhungu@port.ac.uk

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