Undernutrition and Associated Factors Among School Adolescent Girls Attending Schools in Mirab-Armachiho District, Northwest Ethiopia

ABSTRACT

Substantial proportions of adolescent girls are suffering from undernutrition; despite they are considered as future mothers. Undernourished mothers are more likely to give birth to an offspring with impaired growth and development. Hence, investigating adolescents’ undernutrition had a pivotal role to tackle the problem. Therefore, this study aimed to assess undernutrition and associated factors among adolescent girls in Mirabarmacho district, Ethiopia. An institution-based cross-sectional study was conducted from March to April 20, 2018, in the Mirab Armachiho district, using the multistage cluster sampling method. A total of 706 adolescent girls was included in the study. The World Health Organization Anthro Plus software was used to calculate nutritional indices. A Binary Logistic Regression Analysis was used to check the effect of independent variables with adolescent wasting and stunting. The overall prevalence of wasting and stunting was 17.3% (95%CI: 14.6–20.1) and 10.3% (95%CI: 8.2–12.7), respectively. Being in the 10–14 years age group (AOR:2.47,95%CI:1.21–5.06), inadequate Dietary Diversity (Dietary Diversity Score) (AOR:2.46,95%CI:1.45–4.20),food-insecure households (Adjusted Odd Ratio:2.62,95%CI:1.33–5.16),middle wealth index(Adjusted Odd Ratio:1.94,95%CI:1.07–3.51), febrile illness (Adjusted Odd Ratio: 3.12,95%CI:1.94–5.03), diarrheal disease (AOR:3.61,95%CI:2.08–6.28), merchant fathers (Adjusted Odd Ratio:0.40, 95%CI:0.20–0.82),and government employee fathers (Adjusted Odd Ratio:0.27,95%CI:0.09–0.84) were factors significantly associated with thinness, while inadequate Dietary Diversity Score (Adjusted Odd Ratio: 8.07, 95%CI; 4.02–16.20) and febrile illness (Adjusted Odd Ratio; 2.49, 95%CI: 1.48–4.18) were factors relating to the adolescent stunting. Adolescent wasting and stunting are predominant problems in the survey region. Strengthening efforts to ensure household food security, diversified food intake, and prevention and control of infectious diseases are recommended to mitigate adolescent’s undernutrition.

KEYWORDS:

• Adolescent girls
• stunting
• wasting
• ethiopia

List of abbreviations

AOR, Adjusted Odds Ratio; BMI, Body Mass Index; BAZ, BMI for Age-Z Score; CBNC, Community Based Neonatal & Child care; COR, Crude Odds Ratio; CI, Confidence Interval; DDS, Dietary Diversity Score; EDHS, Ethiopian Demographic and Health Survey; HFIAS, Household Food Insecurity Access Scale; RTIs, Respiratory Tract Infections; SES, Socio-Economic Status; UNICEF, United Nations International Children Fund; W/H, Weight for Height; WHZ, Weight for Height Z score; W/L, Weight for Length; WHO, World Health Organization;

Declaration

Ethical consideration and consent to participate: Ethical clearance was received from the Institutional Ethical Review Board of Gondar of University. Supportive letters were obtained from Zonal Educational Department and Dembia District Health education. Written informed consent and assent were obtained from each mother and the participated student in responding to the questions after clearly informing the purpose, benefits, the confidentiality of the data, and the voluntary nature of participation in the survey. Name and other personal identifiers were not registered to preserve confidentiality.

Consent for publication

Not applicable

Availability of data and materials

Data will be available upon request from the corresponding author

Competing interests

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest

Authors’ contributions

Conceptualization: JM, AT, KAG

Data curator: JM, AT, KAG

Formal analysis: JM, AT, KAG

Funding acquisition: JM

Investigation: JM, AT, KAG

Methodology: JM, AT, KAG

Resources: JM

Software: JM, AT, KAG

Supervision: JM, AT, KAG

Validation: JM, AT, KAG

Visualization: JM, AT, KAG

Writing – original draft: JM, AT, KAG

Writing – review & editing: JM, AT, KAG

Acknowledgments

The authors are indebted to their gratitude to study participants, data collectors, and supervisors who participated in the study.

Additional information

Funding

No funding was provided for this study.