Nutritional risk and the family environment in Zambia†

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Abstract
The results of the National Food and Nutrition Programme of Zambia are used to identify the social factors in the family environment which affect the risk of anthropometrically defined growth failure and biochemical nutritional deficiency among children. A nationally representative sample of the rural populations comprising 2161 children aged under five years was studied. Statistical analysis of the data of the National Nutrition Status Survey showed that weight‐for‐height was the most comprehensive anthropometric indicator of long term nutritional risk, and serum albumin was the most comprehensive biochemical indicator of shorter term nutritional risk among these children. These two parameters were, therefore, used to identify the social factors involved in malnutrition. The main factors affecting nutritional risk were prolonged breast feeding followed by abrupt weaning of the child at the onset of a new pregnancy; low maternal weight and height; and lack of parental education, poor employment opportunities, potentially harmful traditional tribal cultural practises and polygamous marriages. These interactions of social factors with nutritional risk are discussed in relation to other results from the Programme covering child mortality in order to provide a comprehensive description of malnutrition in rural Zambia.

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