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Building evidence for information surveillance of nutrition rehabilitation center to assess risk factors for severe acute malnutrition in a tertiary hospital of the northern state of India

Background: As community-based surveys require energy and time, information surveillance of nutrition rehabilitation centers (NRCs) can be used to assess the nature and degree of risk factors for children with severe acute malnutrition (SAM). Therefore, the current study was planned to assess the degree of association of known risk factors for SAM among children admitted in NRC of a tertiary hospital from the northern state of India. Materials and Methods: Case–control study design was adopted where 50 children with SAM (cases) were recruited from NRC and 50 without SAM (controls) were from an immunization clinic of a tertiary center. A pretested structured interviewer-administered questionnaire was used to collect data from cases and controls. Results: Type of house, status of water and sanitation, simple exponential smoothing, method of birth, birth order, initiation and frequency of breastfeeding, colostrum intake, and profile of diarrhea and acute respiratory infection were statistically similar among cases and controls. Logistic regression analysis observed SAM had significantly high odds for risk factors like mean age of mother at birth (1.4, 1.0–1.9), low birth weight (LBW) (8.7, 2.1–35.3), and bottle feeding (6.3, 1.2–14.2), whereas exclusive breastfeeding (0.2, 0.4–0.4) and fully immunization (0.07, 0.5–0.001) had significantly low odds. Conclusion: Advancing age of mother at the time of delivery, LBW, poor rate of exclusive breastfeeding, and high rate of bottle feeding are significant associated factors for SAM in the study area. Reasons for LBW and reasons for bottle feeding need to be targeted in the study area to reduce SAM among children <5 years of age.