Analysing the Causes of Child Stunting in DPRK

Although there has been considerable improvement, the nutritional situation in DPRK still warrants a lot of concern. The 2002 nutrition assessment results suggest that child underweight rates in DPRK are now as good if not better than many other countries in East Asia. However the prevalence rate of 42% for stunting encountered in 2002 is still " very high " according to accepted international criteria. DPRK continues to rely on humanitarian aid for a quarter of its food needs. The question now becomes, if the child malnutrition rates have improved so much, how might the food aid be better used in the future and/or what else might be done to further improve stunting of children in particular. In order to better understand the problem of stunting in DPRK an analysis was carried out of its possible causes. A modified version of the UNICEF conceptual framework was used to guide this analysis, which took into account the influence of the temporal predictors of child malnutrition, namely maternal nutritional status and foetal growth. The data from the 2002 Nutrition assessment of 10 provinces/cities was used to carry out the analysis. Although the 2002 nutrition assessment data set is not ideally suited to using the conceptual framework to try to analyse for the causes of stunting, it still allows some important conclusions to be reached about the possible causes of stunting of children in DPRK. Maternal nutritional status and food intake seem to be associated with child stunting. Of the temporal predictors only maternal mid-upper arm circumference showed a significant association with stunting. Of the immediate level predictors in the disease category, only the occurrence of diarrhoea in the previous two weeks was found to be significantly associated with child stunting. In the immediate level category of nutrient intake, whilst 65% of children received vitamin A capsule in the previous 6 months, stunting rates were a half of those not receiving. Similarly stunting rates were significantly higher among the children born to the one third of mothers that got vitamin A capsules at birth. The children of the mothers that had consumed meat or egg the day before were less likely to be stunted as were the children of the one third of mothers that had eaten rice and of the one third that had eaten pulses the day before. The overwhelming majority of households (99.6%) were reported to have at least some …