PREVALENCE OF MALNUTRITION ONE YEAR AFTER VARZAGHAN EARTHQUAKE AMONG ONE-YEAR-OLD INFANTS IN RURAL AND URBAN AREAS OF HERIS

Background and Aim: There is evidence indicating that occurrence of natural and man-made disasters are associated with not only pregnancy but also outcomes over a couple of days up to less than one year after the disaster. Therefore, this study was aimed to assess nutritional status of one-year old infants affected by Varzaghan Earthquake in Heris in August 2012.Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted on 580 complete medical profiles in local health centers of one-year old infants (271 girls and 315 boys) who lived in Heris and delivered up to March 2013. Data on birth date, age, gender as well as weight and height at birth and one year old were obtained from the profiles and Epi Info software was used to analyze nutritional status using weight-for age(WA), height-for-age(HA) and weight-for-height (WH) indices according to the WHO suggested cutoffs for Z-score criteria.Results: Our results showed that prevalence of malnutrition based on WA, HA and WH was 51.21%, 49.83% and 13.97%, respectively. The prevalence of mild malnutrition was more than 2 times greater than moderate malnutrition in both genders (p<0.001) and none of the infants suffered from severe types of malnutrition. No significant association was found in the prevalence of different types of malnutrition between boys and girls. Indeed, moderate malnutrition was more prevalent in highly- vs less-damaged areas (20.2% vs. 11.3%, P= 0.017). Conclusion: Natural disasters such as earthquake could influence nutritional status of infants during a relatively longer time and proper nutritional management before crisis may overcome these conditions.

کلیدواژه ها:

Earthquake ، Infant ، Malnutrition ، Varzaghan