Prevalence of Stunting and Associated Factors among public Primary School pupils of Bahir Dar city, Ethiopia: School-Based Cross-Sectional Study

Background: Stunting is a well-established pupils-health indicator of chronic malnutrition which reliably gives a picture of the past nutritional history and the prevailing environmental and socioeconomic circumstances. Objective: The prevalence of stunting and associated factors among public primary school pupils of Bahir Dar city. Method: A cross-sectional study was carried out from March to June 2019. Data were coded and entered into Epi-Data and exported to SPSS. Then, Anthropometric data were converted into height for age Z-scores to determine the pupils stunting outcomes using WHO Anthro-Plus software. Then, the final analysis was done by SPSS version 20 software. Anthropometric measurements determined the proportion of stunting (z-score of height for age less than minus two standard deviations from WHO Anthro-plus software output). A simple logistic regression model was fitted to identify factors associated between the independent variables and the dependent variable at a 95% confidence level and p-value <0.05. Results: 370 primary school pupils were included in the study with the mean age of 121.84(+26.67) months. About 51.6% of the pupils were females. The total prevalence of stunting was 15.13% (95%CI; 11%, 19%). The burden of stunting was higher in the age group of greater than 132 months. Pupil’s age ≥132 months (AOR=15.6; 95%CI; 3.31, 73.45; p-value<0.001) and male pupils (AOR=7.07; 95%CI: 2.51, 19.89; p-value<0.0002) were significantly associated with stunting. Conclusion: The prevalence of stunting was relatively lower than the regional estimated stunting level. However, this result is also very significant figure to get critical attention. Pupil’s age ≥132 months and male sex were significantly associated with stunting.