Coexistence of child stunting and maternal overweight pairs within the same household in urban area of Ibadan, southwest, Nigeria

Abstract

Background: Under-nutrition among under-five children and the rising rates of overweight and obesity remains a serious problem in the developing countries.

Objective: To determine the prevalence of coexistence of child stunting and maternal overweight pairs in the same household in Ibadan, Nigeria.

Methods: The cross-sectional study was carried out among randomly selected 405 mother/child pairs. Pretested interviewer-administered questionnaire was used to obtain information on socio demographic characteristics of the household, the anthropometric characteristics of both mothers and children were also taken. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics while relationship between variables were tested using chi square test at p<0.05. Children anthropometric measurements were analyzed using WHO Anthro software.

Results: Mean age of mothers was 29.09±5.21 years and the children were 10.06±13.43 months. All the mothers were employed, 28.7% had monthly income >$400 available to the household and 1.0% spent more than 75% of the household income on food. Primary occupation of the mothers, estimated household monthly income and percentage of household income spent on food have significant relationship with stunting (p<0.05). Among the children, 3.9% were severely underweight, 26.2% were severely stunted and 5.2% were severely wasted. However, 27.2% of the mothers were overweight and 9.8% were obese. Prevalence of stunted child and overweight mother pairs was 12.8%.

Conclusion: Prevalence of stunting was high among the children and overweight was high among the mothers. Dual form of malnutrition in form of stunted child and overweight mother pairs exist among the study population and the prevalence was found to be notable.

Keywords: Child stunning, Maternal overweight, Urban area, Nigeria, SCOWT