Socioeconomic risk factors of malnutrition among Egyptian children between 6 months and 2 years of age,Cairo,Egypt

Background malnutrition continues to be a significant public health and development concern around the world with about one-third of the world's children malnourished. objective to identify and determine the risk factors for undernutrition in children between 6 months and 2 years of age attending outpatient clinics of the pediatric hospital,university of cairo. participants and methods a matched case-control study design was applied. two hundred malnourished children attending the outpatient malnutrition clinic of the center for social and preventive medicine (cspm),department of pediatrics,faculty of medicine,cairo university,and 200 healthy controls were included in the study. the study was conducted from january 2010 to june 2010. results the mean ages of the patients and controls were 11.31 ( ± 5.6) and 11.5 (± 5.3) months,respectively. the identified socioeconomic risk factors for malnutrition in the bivariate analysis were maternal illiteracy [odds ratio (or = 1.85),95% confidence interval (ci) 1.2-2.85],paternal illiteracy (or =2.09,95% ci 1.08-4.04),and large family size,with the number of children greater than three (or = 3.76,95% ci 2.48-5.71). logistic regression analysis revealed that the risk for malnutrition was independently associated with lack of exclusive breastfeeding for the first 6 months of life (or = 5.77,95% ci 3.28-10.17),maternal illiteracy (or= 5.28,95% ci 1.92-14.5),reluctance to seek medical advice during illness (or = 2.36,95% ci 1.23-4.54),late initiation of breastfeeding after birth (or =2.33,95% ci 1.25-4.33),and nonattendance of health or nutrition sessions (or= 2.02,95% ci 1.17-3.51). conclusion and recommendations lack of parental education,poor nutritional behavior,and child-feeding practices are important risk factors among malnourished children. these characteristics can be used for identifying high-risk groups and for designing and targeting preventive intervention programs. © 2012 egyptian public health association.