Correlates of child malnutrition in Kenya
Abstract
Child Malnutrition continues to be a major health burden in developing countries and is argued to
be the most important risk factor for illness and death, particularly affecting hundreds of millions
of young children globally. While infection in turn has an adverse bearing on nutritional status
this paper basically focuses on the role of malnutrition on morbidity only. Although malnutrition
may be an important cause of morbidity in many diseases, this study was restricted to the three
major causes of death; malaria, diarrhea and acute respiratory infections.
The objective of this paper is to understand the correlates of child malnutrition and further
establish whether malnutrition is associated with morbidity in Kenya. It is postulated that
decreased immunity caused by elevated malnutrition is one of the reasons for increase in
morbidity from infections. The observations have important implications for conceptualizing the
relationships among malnutrition and morbidity; and planning actions to improve child health
and survival in Kenya.
The data for this study was sourced from the Kenya Demographic and Health survey (KDHS)
2003, a nationwide survey that was undertaken to monitor the progress in health and population
indicators. This study uses bivariate analysis to establish existence of differentials in the
correlates of malnutrition and also in disease incidence. Multivariate analysis was used to
establish the net effect of the correlates of malnutrition and the effect of malnutrition on
morbidity.
The results of this study are consistent with earlier studies and indicate that malnutrition is an
outcome of several factors and that malnutrition is positively correlated to malaria, diarrhea and
acute respiratory infection (ARl). Poverty (proxied by wealth index), maternal literacy, region of
residence and sex of the child were found to be the major contributory factors for malnutrition. It
is therefore recommended that improving the nutritional status of populations would help to
reduce morbidity from diarrhea l, malaria and ARl diseases simultaneously. This can be achieved
through proper targeting of the already identified correlates of malnutrition.
Citation
A project presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree in master of arts in population studies, university of NairobiPublisher
Department of Population Studies & Research Institute, University of Nairobi