Malnutrition Among Preschool Children In Baghdad City, Iraq

This study carried out in Baghdad city which is the capital of Iraq after 6 years of war in 2003 to assess the nutritional status of preschool children and to see the effect of the whole environment and especially the unstable security situation on the nutrition of the children. This study tried to focus on three factors that may relate to the child nutritional status which are socio-demographic, socioeconomic and the environmental factors. The most important one was the environmental because of the unstable situation in Iraq after 2003 war and following years of unstable security situation that affect on the daily living activities of the people of Iraq and especially Baghdad. The results of the study show that the prevalence of malnourished children was 18.2%. The environmental factors were significantly associated with child nutritional status like source of drinking water and unstable security situation. Families who lived in non secure area have 2.3 times more chance to have malnourished child. The family with any member killed in the last 5 years was also significantly associated with malnutrition