Infant's food complementary status in 46 poor rural areas

  Objective   To analyze food complementary status of children under 3 years in poor rural area of Western China, and to provide a scientific evidence for Ministry of Health of China to develop a regulation and policy regarding to child nutrition improvement and child health care.

  Methods   According to the design of cross-sectional study and stratified randomly sampling, the status of food supplement was described by rate, time and frequency, Z score of height for age(HAZ)and Z score of weight for age(WAZ) were used as measurement of nutrition status of children.

  Results   The complementary rate of grain food among the infants was 88%, which of vegetable protein was lowest(44.7%).The rates of five kinds of complementary food increased with the infants aging, and at month-age stage, the rate of grain food was highest, rates of vegetable, animal protein, eggs and milk were ordered by descendent turn.It was late to supply food for infants, the median age of feeding complements was 6 months, which of eggs, vegetables and animal protein was about 8 months, vegetable protein's introduced time was at 10 months.The proportion of eating eggs and meat everyday was only 161 6% and 15.4% respectively during the first period of 4-6 months, and less 60% and 50% separately in 12 months of birthing.The prevalences of stunting(Height for Age Z-score < -2)and underweight(Weight for Age Z-score < -2)in the group of introduced complementary food were lower than that in the group without introduced complementary food after 6 months, and the big difference occured in the children aged among 12-24 months.

  Conclusion   The main problems of the food complementary in poor rural area of Westem China were that the first supplement time was delayed, the categories of complementary food was single, and the taking amount was low.To improve the nutrition status of children less than 3 years old in rural area, an imporant strategy was to launch nutrition education program particular for mothers.Another specific suggestion was to make good use of the local nutrition resources, as were instanced by eggs, vegetable protein such as legume and vegetables.