Risk Factors for Malnutrition Among Under-Five-Year olds in an Inner City Community inIbadan: A Case-Control Study

Background:Morbidity and mortality rates associated with malnutrition in the under-five-year olds are high especially among children from the low socio-economic class, yet not all children from this deprived environment develop malnutrition. Objectives: To identify risk factors associated with the development of malnutrition in the under-five-year olds in a homogeneous inner city community. Design: A community-based, case-control study. Materials and Methods: One hundred and thirty eight children (subjects and controls) aged less than five years living in the traditional area of Idikan, Ibadan, participated in the study. All households with children under five years were listed and visited over a period of three months. All children in these households were examined and those with weight-for-age less than 2 standard deviations of the NCHS median value were enrolled as subjects. A control, who was not malnourished, was selected for every subject identified; they were matched 1:1 by age and sex from the same compound or adjacent compounds. Results: The youngest malnourished child was two months old while the mean age of the subjects was 22.5 ± 14.1 months. A significantly higher proportion of subjects than controls had primary caretakers who were not their parents (16.9 percent vs 6.2 percent; p0.05). In the case-control analysis, low paternal education (incomplete primary school education and less)(