Prevalence of Malnutrition among Adolescent: The Socio-Economic Issues and Challenges in Mumbai Metropolitan Region

Abstract

Adolescent must have access to health care, nutrition and education. The physical and psychological changes are taking place in this period. Healthy adolescent means healthy future human resource for any country. The well educated and healthy adolescent always leads to development of country. But adolescent health is critical issue in slums of Mumbai Metropolitan Region. The incidence of severe malnutrition among male and female is found much higher in all suburbs. Such incidence is higher for male as compare to female. The physical and electronic asset holding is more among adolescent. But still incidence of severe malnutrition is higher. We have also found that pulses, vegetables, fruits eaten is more among the adolescent but still we found more incidence of malnutrition. At lower educational level of parents, the incidence of malnutrition is higher among adolescent. At lower per capita income, the body mass index of adolescent is found low. If the per capita income increases then body mass index of adolescent also increases. The logistic regression result shows that malnutrition among female is positively co-related with sex, women water related trips, sewing machine, behavior of health staff and still breastfeeding to child.