Background
Undernutrition is unacceptably high in developing countries, with Sub Saharan Africa
featuring second to South-east Asia. Malawi, like many other countries, is
experiencing unacceptably high undernutrition levels, especially in poor communities
in the rural areas. Our study was conducted in the rural community of the southern
region of Malawi, where the majority of the people speak Yao. This study is carried
out under the large collaborative study of the University of Malawi and the
Universities in Norway supported by the Norwegian Programme for Development,
Research and Education (NUFU). Data analysis was based mostly on secondary data
collected under this collaboration. However, I collected some community level data to
help explain why there is undernutrition in the community.
Main objective
The main objective is to describe health services, socio-economic, infrastructure,
educational services and the agricultural factors at individual, household and
community level and assess their association with the nutritional status of the under
five in different villages of Lungwena community.
Methods
A cross sectional household study was conducted in which only 6 villages were
sampled out of the total 26 villages spread across the community. Four of the sampled
villages are along the lake and the other two are close to the mountainous area.
Villages were also subdivided into intervention and control groups for prevention
activities. Using the household listings in the census data collected earlier before the
baseline surveys, households were selected for interviews. In the analysis, only the
baseline data sets have been used. However, the households in the baseline study did
not match with the under five nutritional data: 186 children from 424 households and
78 children in the merged file. Sample sizes varied for the baseline data sets but these
differences are sorted out in a merged file, which aimed at associating nutritional
status with other variables of potential influence.