Nutrition, anaemia, geohelminth infection and school achievement in rural Jamaican primary school children.

ABSTRACT

PIP: The association of nutritional status, anemia, and geohelminth infection with school attendance and performance was investigated in a cross-sectional study of 800 primary school students 9-13 years of age (mean age, 10.8 years) from 4 rural parishes in Jamaica. 4.9% of the children had heights-for-age less than 2 standard deviations of the US National Center for Health Statistics references and 14.7% were anemic; 38.3% were infected with Trichuris trichiura and 19.4% with Ascaris lumbricoides. Multivariate analyses, controlled for socioeconomic status, indicated children with Trichuris infection had significantly lower achievement levels than uninfected children in spelling, reading, and arithmetic, while those with Ascaris infection had significantly lower scores in spelling and reading. Height-for-age was positively associated with performance in arithmetic. Ascaris infection and anemia predicted poorer school attendance. The associations demonstrated in this study are not necessarily causal. However, these findings indicate that efforts to increase school achievement levels in developing countries should include strategies to address the health and nutritional status of rural children.