Abstract:
Malnutrition is a global health problem that is particularly common in children in the
developing world. This has been a stagnant problem over the last several decades in Sri Lanka
as well, especially in the North and East. The primary focus of this research is to identify factors
associated with child malnutrition in the Karachchi Divisional Secretariat Division (DSD) in
the Kilinochchi district. This study used secondary data of a baseline study conducted by World
Vision Lanka in 2018 and considered a sample size of 277 households with children under five
years of age in the Karachchi DSD. The nutritional status of the children was considered as the
response variable which is classified as nourished and malnourished. In addition, twenty
variables describing demographics, information on the parents, dietary habits etc., were
considered as explanatory variables in this study. Both descriptive and inferential statistics
were used to analyze the data. Since the response variable is dichotomous, binary logistic
regression was used to identify the factors significantly associated with the nutritional status of
the children. The descriptive analyses show that the overall prevalence of stunting is 21.66%,
wasting is 12.64% and underweight is 17.69%. The logistic model reveals that the nutritional
status of the children under five years of age in the Karachchi DSD is significantly associated
with four of the twenty explanatory variables which were tested to explore the relationship.
The four explanatory variables explicitly are birth weight, mothers’ education level, dietary
diversity of the children and the number of family members. The nutritional status of the
children increases with the increase in birth weight, mothers’ education level and dietary
diversity of the children, and in contrast, the nutritional status of the children reduces with the
increase in the number of family members in the household.
