ABSTRACT
In Myanmar, over 38 percent of children in the age-group 5-9 years were never enrolled in school in 1990. Also, there is a lack of information on the comparative prevalence of malnutrition and intestinal parasitosis among school-enrolled and non-enrolled school-age children in Myanmar. We, therefore, undertook a cross-sectional survey comprising 3325 school children from 13 primary schools and 164 non-enrolled school-age children from neighbouring quarters in Tharkayta and Mingaladon townships of Yangon during December 1993. Height and weight of the children were measured and a total of 944 stool samples, including 148 non-enrolled children, were examined for the presence of intestinal parasites. Expressing the nutritional status as standard deviation scores for weight-for-height, the prevalence of wasting among 5-10 years non-enrolled school-age children was 19.8 percent, while that for school children of similar age was 13.9 percent. In addition, non-enrolled school-age children had higher infection rates than school children regarding Ascaris Lumbricoides (66.9 percent vs 50.1 percent), Trichuris trichiura (38.5 percent vs 23.9 percent), and Giardia lamblia (5.4 percent vs 2.7 percent). The policy implication of this study is that health and nutritional status of non-enrolled school-age children needs to be promoted and this should be partly solved by the provision of regular and periodic mass chemotherapy against major intestinal parasitoses influencing nutritional status.