Mother’s Body Height Influenced Short Children, Here’s According to Researchers of IPB
Stunting was a major nutritional problem that still occurred in Indonesia. Basic Health Research Data (Riskesdas) in 2013 showed the national prevalence of short children under five (stunted) and severe stunted children based on the body height index by age (TB/U) was 37.2 percent (%) (consisting of very short of 18.0% and short of 19.2%). Meaning, more than a third of Indonesian toddlers were stunting. Various factors could influence the occurrence of stunting. The nutritional status of the parents, especially the mother’s nutritional status was closely related to the incidence of short children.
Three researchers from Department of Community Nutrition, Faculty of Human Ecology (Fema), Bogor Agricultural University (IPB), namely Farida Hanum, Ali Khomsan, and Yayat Heryatno, tried to observe the relationship of the nutritional intake and the height of mother with the nutritional status of the children under five.
Ali Khomsan said that the children under five needed the nutritional intake per kilogram of relative weight more and more adequate compared to other age, in order to support the optimal growth. Based on the matter, this research aimed to analyze the relationship of the mother’s body height, the nutritional intake, and the nutritional status of children under five. The research design used was the cross sectional study with the subjects of 90 children consisting of 47 stunting children and 43 normal chilcren. The maternal body height was grouped into the short mother (< 150 cm) and the normal mother (≥ 150 cm).
The result of this research showed that most mothers of children (67.8 %) were relatively short. Short mothers (TB < 150 cm) were more common in stunting children (74.5 %) compared to the normal children (60.5 %).
The level of energy and protein sufficiency of stunting children and normal children was still classified as heavy deficit. The stunting children were more with the ages of 48-59 months old (29.8 %), while the normal children were more with the ages of 6-11 months (37.2 %). This indicated the increasing age of the child, the further away from the normal linear growth. This condition was thought to be caused by the higher age of children, so that the need for energy and nutrients was also increasing. The growth of the child was increasingly deviating from the normal with increasing age, if the supply of food (quantity and quality) was inadequate.
From the test done, it was known that there was no significant correlation between the maternal body height and the energy sufficience level with the nutritional status. This was thought to be short mother due to pathology or nutritional deficiencies not due to gene abnormalities of chromosomes. However, there was a negative relationship between the level of protein adequacy with the nutritional status.
“There is no significant relationship between the maternal height and the level of energy sufficiency with the nutritional status. However, there is a negative relationship between the level of protein adequacy with the nutritional status of children under five. The socio-economic of family between the stunting child and the normal child is not much different. The level of energy adequacy and protein of the normal children is still classified as the heavy deficit. This condition makes it necessary to intervene, especially in the form of increased consumption to the normal children whose ages are younger than the stunting children in order not to be stunting in the future,” he said.(IR/nm)
