Abstract

"Introduction: Childhood malnutri-tion is a significant health problem in India and important cause for childhood morbidity and mortali-ty. Lack of knowledge about child feeding contributes significantly to poor nutritional status among children. A system to deliver nutri-tion education effectively would be of value in India. Hence, the pre-sent study was designed to assess nutritional status of 2 to 6 year An-ganwadi children and to evaluate effect of nutrition education and supplementary nutrition on nutri-tional status of malnourished An-ganwadi children
Methods: An Interventional study was carried out in rural anganwadi centres selected by cluster sam-pling technique. Intervention was done in the form of Nutrition edu-cation based on positive deviance approach, supplementary nutrition and supervision. Weight for age of study participants was measured every quarter for a period of one year.
Results: The prevalence of under-weight initially was 47.3%. After intervention prevalence reduced to 43%, 40%, 32% and 30 % during first, second, third and fourth quar-ter assessment. The improvement was significant between baseline and first quarter assessment (P

Key words: Protein energy malnutrition, Posi-tive deviance approach, Supple-mentary nutrition, Anganwadi cen-tres