Abstract

The future strength of every developing country is judged by the wealth and health of its people. Nutritional inequality leads to other forms of social inequalities. Hence nutritional inequalities have great importance in the public health dimension to identify the more underprivileged communities. Thus, the study aims to evaluate the prevalence of nutritional indicators i.e., stunting, wasting, underweight and anthropometric failure among preschool children of two tribal communities of Korba district, Chhattisgarh, India. A total of 209 [102 Birhor (PVTG) and 107 Kawar (non-PVTG)] preschool children were randomly selected and anthropometrically measured through standard procedure and techniques. The nutritional indicators i.e., wasting, stunting and underweight were assessed by WHO (2006) classification, then categorised into different anthropometric failures (Nandy et al., 2005). The age, sex and tribe combined prevalence of wasting; stunting and underweight were 19.2%, 42.6% and 34.0% respectively. Similarly, the prevalence of one or more types of anthropometric failure (B-Y) was 56% among studied children. The prevalence of nutritional indicators [wasting (χ2=16.37; p<0.05) and underweight (χ2=15.46; p<0.05)] and anthropometric failure (χ2=24.52; p<0.05) was found significantly higher among Birhor children than Kawar children. The study concluded that the nutritional status of studied children was disastrous and the primitive tribal group are more deprived, facing severe nutrition insecurity.

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