Malnutrition and anaemia among Somali refugee children in long term camps

ABSTRACT

In a long term Somali refugee camp where nutritional and general health status of children is now considered satisfactory and stable, a randomized community based survey of 300 children under five years was under taken. Results indicate that the prevalence of protein-energy malnutrition is rising again 17.3 percent of children are <80 percent median weight/height and 1.7 per cent are <70 percent median weight/height. In addition, there is a high prevalecence of anaemia 50.5 percent have a haemoglobin level <9g percent and 10.8 percent <6g percent. This cannot be explained by chronic malaria as the spleen rate is only 2 percent. Stool examination of 161 children show 29.8 per cent to have evidence of Giardia Lamblia infection, but this is not statistically correlated with either anaemia or with protein-energy malnutrition. Other potentially pathogenic parasites are uncommon and no hookworm is seen. Examination of blood films of anaemic children shows hypochromia as a striking feature. It is concluded that nutritional deficiencies are a likely major factor in the aetiology of the anaemia. Both protein-energy malnutrition and anaemia seem related to the weaning period (AU)