Nutritional Profile of Rural School Children.

ABSTRACT

Background: Children are not given an opportunity for better future due to lack of understanding of their nutritional and emotional needs, which affects not only the individual child’s health but also nation’s economic progress. Methods: A school based cross sectional study was conducted among primary school children in 6-14 years of age located in AJIMS field practice area pane-Mangalore. Results: The pilot study result showed 45 % morbidity. With this assumption using formula n= 4pq/d2 a sample size of 488 was calculated, thus a total of 500 students were included in the study. The key findings of our study are 53.4% were girls, and 53.4% of children belonged to Muslim community Majority of families belong to socio-economic class II 40.4%. Conclusion: School age is a critical time in the development of human beings and the School setting provides a strategic point of entry for improving child health, self-esteem, life skills and behaviour. Malnutrition is a condition of multifactor deprivation.