Assessment of household food security and nutritional status Of children aged 1-3 years in Seme sub-county, Kenya.

Abstract

In Sub-Saharan Africa, one out of ten households is unable to get food with more than three million children living in households that are severely food insecure. Kenya is among the top 50 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa that has failed to provide enough food for its people; with a Global Hunger Index of 21.9 denoting serious severity. Despite several efforts by the Kenyan Government to resolve household food insecurity, Seme Sub-County still has a higher number of households reporting lack of food or money to purchase food at 41.9 %. This is higher than the national rates at 36.2%. This region also has a higher under -five mortality rate at 72 deaths per 1000 live births as compared to the national rates at 52 deaths per 1000 live births. Despite all these, Seme Sub- County mothers are still more than 50% likely to practice early introduction of complementary feeding which predisposes their children to a higher risk of undernutrition (stunting, wasting and underweight). If these problems persist, then it will result to escalated under-five morbidity and mortality rates. Therefore, the main objective of this study was to assess household food security and nutritional status of children aged 1-3 years in Seme Sub-County, Kenya. The specific objectives were to assess demographic and socio-economic characteristics of the households; to determine food availability and accessibility of households; to assess child dietary intake, to determine the child nutritional status and to determine the relationship between dietary intake and nutritional status of children aged 1-3 years in households in Seme Sub-County, Kenya. The study was conducted in Seme Sub-County. The study population comprised of mothers/caregivers with children aged 1-3 years living in Seme Sub-County. The study adopted a descriptive cross sectional research design. Sample size was determined using Creative Research Systems (2003) formula. A total of 193 households with children aged 1-3 years were interviewed. Simple random sampling technique was used to select the study participants. A questionnaire was used to collect data on socio-demographic characteristics of the household, food availability and accessibility of the households and food frequency questionnaire to assess dietary intake of the child. Nutritional status of the child was assessed using anthropometric assessment. Descriptive statistics was used to summarize each of the specific objectives. Multiple linear regression was used to determine the relationship between dietary intake and nutritional status of children aged 1-3 years. Most children were stunted at (38.9%) denoting chronic malnutrition and long term food deprivation in Seme; others were underweight at (16.1%) and few were wasted at (8.8%). These rates are higher than the national Kenyan rates where stunting is at 26%; wasting is at 4% and underweight is at 11%. The high rates might be attributed to most mothers in Seme practicing early introduction of complementary feeding predisposing their children to under nutrition (stunting, underweight, wasting); poor consumption of Vitamin A rich vegetables and tubers (15.6%) by the children and most households reporting lack of food or money to purchase food at 41.9% which is still higher than the national Kenyan rate which is at 36.2%. Further, there was a statistically significant relationship between stunting and low dietary diversity, p=0.02 in children aged 1-3 years with chances of being stunted increasing by 12 in children aged 1-3 years consuming a lowly diversified diet holding moderate diet diversity and high dietary diversity constant, β(95%CI)=12(11.92,12.08). This denoted that a child who ate a lowly diversified diet was most likely to be stunted. Therefore, there is need for possible targeted and sustainable interventions to be done to cease early introduction of complementary feeding, promote household food security and improve consumption of a highly diversified diet by the children in Seme.