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Malnutrition is one of the serious public health problems especially for children and pregnant women in developing countries such as Bangladesh. This study aims to identify the risk factors associated with child nutrition for both male and female children in Bangladesh.

This study was conducted among 23,099 mothers or caretakers of children under five years of age from a nationally representative survey named Bangladesh Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey, 2019. This study used chi-square test statistic for bivariate analysis and multinomial logistic regression was used to evaluate the adjusted effects of those covariates on child nutritional status.

The prevalence of severely malnourished, nourishment was higher for males than females (5.3% vs 5.1%, 77.4% vs 76.8%) while moderately malnourished were higher for females (18.1% vs 17.4%). The findings from the multinomial model insinuated that the mother’s education level, wealth index, region, early child development, mother’s functional difficulties, child disability, reading children's books and diarrhea had a highly significant effect on moderate and severe malnutrition for male children. For the female children model, factors such as mother’s education level, wealth index, fever, child disability, rural, diarrhea, early child development and reading less than three books were significant for moderate and severe malnutrition.

There is a solution to any kind of problem and malnutrition is not an exceptional health problem. So, to overcome this problem, policymakers should take effective measures to improve maternal education level, wealth status, child health.

The purpose of this paper is threefold: first, to measure the health inequalities among malnourished children; second, to decompose the health inequalities to identify key socioeconomic predictors for child malnutrition; and third, to assess the change in the proportional contribution of key predictors over time.

The study has used data of National Family Health Survey (NFHS) conducted in 1992-1993, 1998-1999 and 2005-2006. The information on anthropometric indicators for children below three years of age is provided; however the study is restricted to “weight-for-age,” as it is considered to be a comprehensive indicator of child nutritional status. In the first stage of analysis, health inequalities are measured among malnourished children using concentration indices (CI) for each round of NFHS. In second stage, the inequalities are decomposed to estimate the proportional contribution of socioeconomic predictors. In the third stage, change in the relative contribution of socioeconomic predictors over three rounds is assessed to suggest target-specific policies and programs.

The results highlight a slow decline of only seven percentage points in the proportion of malnourished children in India during 1992-2006. The increasing values of CIs from −0.13 (1992) to −0.18 (2006) demonstrates the concomitant rise in economic inequalities among malnourished children. The results of decomposition analysis point toward household poor economic status and mother’s illiteracy as the major contributor of inequalities during 1992-2006. During the study period, the economic status explained 50, 65 and 59 percent of inequalities, whereas mother’s illiteracy explained 40, 30 and 29 percent of inequalities, respectively. Overall, the contributors to health inequalities remained the same over time with a change in their relative contribution.

The present study is focussed on three rounds of NFHS data conducted at different time period and so it has certain limitations which should be kept in mind while interpreting the results. The study has revealed mother’s education and economic status of the household as the major contributory factors toward child health inequalities. However, one should not forget that the level and quality of education has undergone tremendous change from 1992 to 2006 which the authors could not capture considering the availability of data in the form of years of schooling. Second, since the NFHS-1 has collected the information about the caste groups in only three categories, i.e. schedule caste, schedule tribe and others; the authors have to pool the other backward caste groups with the general caste groups. Third, the authors have used the broad classification of place of residence, i.e. rural and urban area to analyze the inequalities assuming the uniform level of development across the urban regions; however there exists huge disparities within urban areas which leave scope for further research. Fourth, though, the authors have estimated the wealth based inequalities, but NFHS does not provide the absolute level of wealth and so the authors have computed the proxy measure for wealth based on the household assets which has been extensively used in the field of research. Despite these limitations, the authors however believe that the present research work has appropriately decomposed the inequalities among malnourished children and have revealed the changes in the proportional contribution of socioeconomic factors over time.

The decomposition analysis brought into light that average health indicators are insufficient for determining the right approach to health intervention programs. Health policy interventions have to focus ideally on both health averages and within and between group inequalities based on varying contributions of socioeconomic determinants.

Concentrated efforts along with the inter-sectoral concurrence, good nutrition governance, effective investment and unequal distribution of resources are pre-requisites to ameliorate the level and existing inequalities in child malnutrition in India.

The distinctiveness of this study can be primarily found in the use of all three rounds of NFHS data to estimate health inequalities among underweight children. The study has also decomposed the health inequalities to estimate and analyze the change in relative contribution of socioeconomic predictors for each round to facilitate the formulation of target-specific policies and programs.

The purpose of this paper is to develop and standardize nutrient dense, easily digestible and affordable ready-to-eat supplementary foods from locally available ingredients for malnourished children and to assess their nutritional composition.

To develop supplementary foods, wheat and green gram were germinated, dried and made into flour. Potatoes of “Kufri Pukhraj” variety procured from university were washed, peeled, sliced, boiled, dipped in potassium metabisulphite solution, dried and grounded into flour. Spinach leaves were washed, dried and made into powder. Five wholesome ready-to-eat supplementary foods, namely, panjiri, mathi, seviyan, biscuits and pinni, were developed from germinated cereal, pulse and potato flour and spinach leaves powder. The products were standardized with potato flour and spinach leaves powder. The developed products were analyzed for proximate composition by standardized methods.

One-way analysis of variance and Tukey’s test was used to obtain differences in organoleptic scores within different levels of treatments. All five supplementary foods were acceptable at 30 per cent level of potato flour and 2.5 per cent level of spinach leaves powder. Mean scores of panjiri, mathi, seviyan, biscuits and pinni were significantly different (p < 0.05). Significant (p < 0.05) difference was observed in terms of moisture, crude protein, crude fat, crude fibre and ash content among the developed products.

The developed ready-to-eat supplementary foods can be recommended for supplementary feeding programmes running in the country.

The paper aims at the development of high energy protein supplementary foods for malnourished children. The developed complementary food blend is made up of variety of food groups like cereal, pulse, root and tuber and green leafy vegetables to provide wholesome nutrition to children. This is different to originally provided supplementary foods to children made up of only cereal. The developed products also add a variety to supplementary foods given to malnourished children in supplementary feeding programmes.

The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to examine the effect of interventional measures on admitted children and, second, to estimate the level of utilization of nutrition rehabilitation centres (NRCs) through bed occupancy rate in India.

A cross-sectional study involving review of records of malnourished children admitted during 1st January to 31st December 2014 in four districts of Northern Karnataka, India. The data were collected during January 2015.

A statistically significant difference was obtained between the weight of children at admission and discharge (p < 0.001). The average weight gain during the stay at the centres was 6.1 ± 7.1 g/kg/day. The proportion of severely malnourished children decreased from 56 per cent at admission to 32 per cent at discharge. The children who stayed for a stipulated period of 14 days were fully recovered and discharged from the centre compared to those stayed for lesser period. Poor follow-up visits of discharged children are observed, and the average bed occupancy rate was only 40 per cent.

This study showed that, the NRCs were effective in improving the condition of admitted children, but the utilization of these NRCs was sub-optimal in Karnataka. This study pointed to a number of operational issues that need to be addressed if these NRCs are being used effectively.

Considering Brazil as a food producer with global prominence and the urgency for food security in some developing countries, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the exports of Brazilian dry-beans against food security of its buyers.

The investigation was conducted through analysis of data from official databases as FAO and WHO. This study elaborated dispersion maps crossing characteristics of the international buyers of Brazilian dry-beans considering their food security situations.

Brazil has a high domestic consumption of dry-beans, and exports are seen as a secondary activity. However, its production is superior to their domestic needs. Exports of Brazilian dry-beans are generally volatile and unstable. Evidence suggests that countries with serious problems of child and population’s malnutrition (e.g. India and Angola) buy more Brazilian dry-beans. However, their domestic consumptions are still low.

This research based only on exports of dry-bean is faced as a significant limitation. Future studies adding other staple foods commonly consumed by economically disadvantaged populations may contribute to the investigation of the role of Brazil against the need for food security in developing countries and emerging economies.

Social implications are focussed in the pursuit of malnutrition decrease in the populations of developing countries through the consumption of nutritionally rich and economically viable food, such as dry-beans.

The original value is based on the analysis of Brazilian dry-beans production and trades and its potential to contribute to nutritional safety and food security in developing countries.

‘Nutrition in education’ rather than ‘Nutrition education’: is there a difference? Last September a small meeting was organised by UNESCO to discuss the topic of Nutrition in educational policy and planning, and it became clear from the outset that what participants were concerned about was not so much ‘What are children taught about nutrition?’ but ‘How do ideas about nutrition enter into the planning of education services?’ Although the discussions and papers related mostly to the Third World, some of the conclusions would apply elsewhere as well.

The main purpose of this paper is to increase the level of knowledge pertaining to nutritional status of preschoolers and to identify/quantifying the relative importance of various socioeconomic and environmental factors which may have significant role in determining nutritional status of preschoolers in Pakistan.

Household food availability, childcare practices, and child health status being focused as proximate determinants of child nutritional status pose problems for the simple regression analysis. An ordinary least squares (OLS) estimation of the regression with nutrition as an outcome and these three proximate variables as determinants could be biased for two reasons. First, there may be unobserved variables that are relegated to the error term but are correlated with the variables included on the right side. Second, explanatory variables may exit that are endogenous or codetermined with the outcome variable and hence are correlated with the error term. The approach to address these problems is to use instrumental variables (IV) approach. The credibility of the IV approach will rest on the ability to find variables that are correlated with the suspected endogenous explanatory variables but that do not affect the outcome variable (other than through the explanatory variable being instrumented).

The results from empirical analysis shows that factors on the maternal and household level are more important determinants of child nutritional status. Food availability, childcare practices and child health (diarrhea) are significantly related to child nutritional status. Household size has negative and significant impact on child nutritional status. Household income has an important and significant impact on child nutritional status. Childcare practices are negatively and significantly related to child nutritional status. This may suggest that as childcare practices improve, they may complement the need for other sources of improved energy for preschooler's nutritional status. The findings suggest that women's education plays a very important role in improving children's nutritional status and that the nutrition status among children depends on both better sanitary conditions and on dietary intake.

Owing to data limitation present analysis employed child calorie adequacy ratio (CCAR) as a proxy of child nutritional status. For that to estimate, commonly used measures are nutrient intake, caloric adequacy ratio and relative caloric allocation.

A key message of this research is that significant achievement could be made toward reducing malnutrition through actions in sectors that have not been the traditional focus of nutritional interventions like improved hygiene conditions.

This could be the first ever effort in describing child nutritional status with the help relative more robust analytical technique for Pakistan.

In earlier articles in this issue, we have shown how the incidence of some types of diseases, those that are caused by long term consumption of an over‐rich diet, can be reduced. Here we look briefly at

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan in the opening quote reminds us that despite the medical and public health gains of recent decades, benefits have not accrued to the most vulnerable of citizens, children (DeYoung & Lynch, 2002). For decades research has quantified the links between poverty, ill-health and the global burdens imposed by disease. Yet, the distribution of poverty and disease has changed little over the last thirty years, continuing to be concentrated among poor children in both emerging and developed nations (Bellamy, 1999; Brundtland, 1999). Fundamentally, the complex web of poverty relegates youth to a lifetime of suffering because of the relationships between and among resources, health and neurological development.

Service use between six and 11 years of age is reported for children adopted from Romania into UK families, and compared with that for children adopted within the UK before six months of age. Between six and 11, there had been only one adoption breakdown, and about one in ten couples experienced a marital breakdown. Apart from continuing concerns over hepatitis B carrier status in a small number of children, physical health problems were not a prominent feature. By contrast, nearly one‐third of the children from Romania placed in UK families after the age of six months received mental health services provision ‐ a rate far higher than the 11 to 15% in the groups adopted before the age of six months. Such provision was strongly related to research assessments of mental health problems and largely concerned syndromes that were relatively specific to institutional deprivation (quasi‐autism, disinhibited attachment and inattention/overactivity). There were similar differences between the UK adoptees and the adoptees from Romania entering the UK after six months of age in major special educational provision and, again, the findings showed that the provision was in accord with research assessments of scholastic achievement. The between group differences for lesser special educational provision were much smaller and there was some tendency for the early adopted groups to receive such provision for lesser degrees of scholastic problems than the children adopted from Romania who entered the UK after six months of age. The policy and practice implications of the findings are briefly discussed.