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  • Title: Nutritional and immunisation status among under-fives and changes thereto over last five years in a Punjab village.
    Author: Panda P, Prakash R, Benjamin AI, Singh S, Zachariah P.
    Journal: Indian J Matern Child Health; 1995; 6(2):54-6. PubMed ID: 12319819.
    Abstract:
    In India, physicians and health workers based out of the 12-bed rural health center in the village of Lalton Kalan make home visits to provide comprehensive health care to families. Families also come to the center for care. Physicians and health workers use a risk approach to target the scheduled caste children. Researchers aimed to evaluate the effect of these primary health care services on child nutritional status and immunization status. During 1988-1993, normal nutritional status among children under 5 years old improved by only 1.5% (63.8-65.3%). 1st degree malnutrition increased by 1% (24.6-25.6%). 2nd and 3rd degree malnutrition decreased by 1.1% (7.5-6.4%) and 1.4% (4%-2.6%), respectively. 3rd degree malnutrition among girls decreased while it increased slightly among boys (-3.9% vs. +0.6). In 1988, girls were more likely to suffer from grade 2 and grade 3 malnutrition than boys (10.7% vs. 4.5% and 6.4% vs. 2%, respectively). Malnutrition remained more common among the scheduled caste children than the non-scheduled caste children throughout the study period (e.g., grade 1 malnutrition, 30.4% vs. 21.2% in 1988 and 35.6% vs. 16.9% in 1993, respectively). Grade 3 malnutrition stood at 9.5% among the scheduled caste children in 1988 compared to 1% among the non-scheduled caste children. By 1993, these figures were 4.3% and 1.1%, respectively. Among the scheduled caste children, the prevalence of grade 2 and grade 3 malnutrition had fallen 5.6% and 5.2%, respectively. Complete immunization (i.e., 1 dose of BCG and measles vaccine and 3 doses of diphtheria-pertussis-tetanus and oral polio vaccine) increased 24% for a 1993 complete immunization prevalence rate of 74%. The increase in complete immunizations was greatest among the scheduled caste children. These findings show that undernutrition still plagues children in the Punjab, the bread basket of India, highlighting that food availability alone does not maintain child nutrition.
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