Assessment of Nutritional Status of Under-Five Children in an Urban Area of South Delhi, India

Introduction Malnutrition among children continues to be a severe public health problem worldwide, whether in a developing country like India or a developed nation. Correct estimation of the problem is a prerequisite to planning the measures to control it. Objective To estimate the prevalence of undernutrition among children under five years of age by utilizing the Composite Index of Anthropometric Failure and the WHO growth charts. Methods From January to March 2020, 1332 children under the age of five years participated in a facility-based, descriptive, cross-sectional study at Fatehpur Beri, Urban Primary Health Center. An anthropometric assessment for each participant was done as per the WHO criteria. The data were entered into a Microsoft Office Excel spreadsheet (Microsoft Corporation, Redmond, WA) and analyzed with WHO Anthro software (WHO, Geneva, Switzerland) and a licensed version of SPSS 21 (IBM Corp., Armonk, NY). Continuous data were expressed using appropriate measures of central tendency, while categorical data were expressed in either frequency or proportions. Results The mean age of the study participants was 23.04 ± 18.24 months, and males (53.3%) were more than (46.7%) females. The prevalence of being underweight was 24.5% (327/1332), of which 24.1% (79/327) of children were severely underweight. Of the total study participants, 27.3% (362/1332) were stunted, and 17.8% (237/1332) were wasted, of which 29.1% (69/237) were severely wasted. The prevalence of anthropometric failure was 45%. Conclusions According to the findings of this study, the prevalence of undernutrition among the study participants was substantial. Furthermore, considering weight for age as the sole criterion may underestimate the true prevalence of malnutrition. The findings have critical implications for future interventions and initiatives among children in India.