Study of impact of sociocultural and economic factors of mothers on the nutritional status of their malnourished children in a rural area of Delhi, India

Background: Even after following the multi-strategy approach of Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) in India for the last four decades, reducing malnutrition among children below 6 years has turned out to be a herculean task, because of the poor focus by Anganwadi workers (AWWs) on empowering community to manage malnutrition among the children at home level. Therefore, it becomes necessary to assess the role of the mothers in managing malnutrition in their children. Objectives: To study the impact of sociocultural and economic factors of mothers on the nutritional status of their malnourished children in a rural area of Delhi, India. Materials and Methods: The study was conducted for a 6-month duration (July–December 2013) in a rural ICDS block (Narela) of Delhi. The 80 mothers of both the healthy and malnourished children (40 mothers in each group) were interviewed in depth via semi-structured interview schedule; and all these mothers were separately studied further by focus group discussion technique to explore their beliefs, opinions, and practices on malnutrition management in their children. All the collected data were finally triangulated and analyzed after applying w-test from SPSS, version 22.0. Results: The main reasons behind inadequate efforts made by mothers in nutritional management of their children were the following: sporadic nutrition and health education given by AWWs at Anganwadi centers (AWCs) and homes to mothers leading to a lack of nutritional knowledge (p o 0.05) and inadequate treatment-seeking behavior toward malnourished children (47.5%) and the poverty causing mothers to work outside home (p o 0.05). Conclusion: AWWs need to focus urgently on their proper nutritional and health educational activities for mothers of malnourished children, regarding key messages on proper child-feeding practices and also the concerned government needs to provide more income opportunities to fathers of such children along with a targeted Public Distribution System.