Preditores da desnutrição infantil em populações ribeirinhas do Pará

Abstract

Objective: To identify under nutrition’s determinants among children aged less than two years old, living close the rivers of Pará state (Brazil). Methods: Survey was conducted among 203 children form four river’s community: Aveiro (Southeast), Barcarena (Metropolitan), Cametá (Northeast) and Santarém (Low Amazon) by face to face interviews with the responsible for the child. The dependent variable was under nutrition, according to length to age less than -1 z-score following the recent World Health recommendation. Dependent variables were characteristics of household, family leader, child’s mother, pre-natal, family’s food pattern, child’s birth, mother’s care and child’s demography. The prevalence of under nutrition was calculated according to basic, intermediate and immediate indicators considering the distance between variables of the indicators and the outcome. Multilevel analysis was performed by logistic regression taking into account the hierarchy between indicators and under nutrition, according p<0.05. Results: The under nutrition prevalence reached 35.0% of the studied children, varying from 28.6% in Aveiro to 43.1% in Barcarena. The variables associated to under nutrition were low birth weight and aging. The child’s age was the under nutrition predictor: the likelihood of a child aged between 12 and 17 months old to present under nutrition was 3.4 times bigger than a child aged less than six months old, raising to five times for children aged between 18 and 23 months old. Conclusion: At river’s population, the under nutrition among children less than two years old still a severe health nutrition problem, probably because the long exposition time to the environmental risk factors.