Pavement dwelling is likely to aggravate malnutrition among its residents due to extreme poverty, lack of dwelling and access to food and their exposure to polluted environment. Paucity of information about nutritional status of street children compared to that among urban slum dwellers, squatters or rural/tribal population is quite evident. The present study revealed the magnitude of Protein Energy Malnutrition (PEM) and few associated factors among a sample of 435 underfives belonging to pavement dweller families and selected randomly from clusters of such families, from each of the five geographical sectors of Calcutta city. Overall prevalence of PEM was found almost similar (about 70%) to that among other 'urban poor' children viz. slum dwellers etc., but about 16% of them were found severely undernourished (Grade III & V of IAP classification of PEM). About 35% and 70% of street dweller children had wasting and stunting respectively. Severe PEM (Grade III & IV) was more prevalent among 12-23 months old, girl child, those belonged to illiterate parents and housewife mothers rather than wage earners. It also did increase with increase of birth rate of decrease of birth interval.
PIP: This document presents a cross-sectional survey concerning the magnitude of protein energy malnutrition (PEM) and its associated factors among 435 under-5 pavement-dwelling children in Calcutta. Results revealed that 69.43% were undernourished and that 16% of them were suffering from severe malnutrition (grade III and IV of the Indian Academy of Pediatrics criteria for PEM). The 24-35 month age group had the highest prevalence of malnutrition (82.93%) followed by the 36-47 and 12-23 month age groups with prevalences of 76.19% and 74.03%, respectively. Prevalence of severe grade malnutrition was noted to be three times higher in females (24.76%) than males (8.45%), and among families it increased in direct proportion to birth rate and inverse proportion to birth interval. Moreover, children of illiterate parents and nonworking mothers had a higher incidence of severe PEM. Simple measures such as exclusive breast-feeding and timely complementary feeding as well as measures directed toward birth spacing and limiting family size should be implemented to solve the problem of malnutrition.