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Assessment of nutritional status by composite index of anthropometric failure (CIAF): a study among preschool children of Sagar Block, South 24 Parganas District, West Bengal, India

Abstract Being a developing nation, rural India is still facing a serious health problem in form of undernutrition particularly among young children. To optimize this problem, the Central Government has been operating a nationwide nutritional intervention programme in the form of Integrated Child Development Service (ICDS) scheme. Unfortunately, it has failed to achieve the desired goal during last four decades. Therefore the present study was designed to measure the seriousness and severity of overall undernutrition using Composite Index of Anthropometric Failure (CIAF) among the rural Bengalee preschool children of Sagar Block, South 24 Parganas, West Bengal, India. This cross-sectional study was conducted among 656 preschool children (326 boys and 330 girls) aged 3 to 5 years. Height (cm) and weight (kg) measurements were taken according to standard procedure, age and sex specific 2 z-scores values of height-for-age, weight-for-height and weight-for-age were used to assess stunting, wasting and underweight, respectively, as per the World Health Organization Guidelines. CIAF was also computed as per standard methodology to assess the degree of undernutrition among the studied children. The overall age and sex combined prevalence of stunting, wasting, underweight and CIAF was 26.2%, 35.4%, 51.1% and 61.3%, respectively. CIAF showed a higher prevalence of undernutrition (61.28%) in comparison to other three indicators i.e., stunting, wasting and underweight. We conclude that the nutritional status of the subjects was not satisfactory. It was also established that the CIAF is a better indicator of nutritional status than traditional measures of stunting, wasting and underweight, because it determines overall (total) anthropometric failure.