Title: Health profile of government aided private school children in urban slum of Solapur, Southern Maharashtra, India
Abstract: Background: Malnutrition is a silent emergency and its prevalence is high among children under five years of age. The school children in present study belongs to lower middle income families and their parents are working in unorganised sectors like handloom textile mills, construction sites worker, domestic bidi worker. Hence the study was planned to understand their health profile including morbidity pattern and sociodemographic profile and their nutritional status and grade of malnutrition according to World Health Organisation (WHO) growth reference standards.Methods: The present descriptive cross sectional Study was carried out among 767 students from class Lower Kindergarten to 7th standard of government aided private school. A pre-designed and pre-tested questionnaire was used to interview and examine all the participated students. Grading of malnutrition was carried out using WHO reference tables. Chi square test of significance was applied.Results: A total of 767 students participated in this study. Boys were 513 (66%) and girls were 254 (33%).Most common morbidity found to be dental caries 55% .Out of 537 children 339 (63%) were underweight. Out of 767 children 302 (39%) had stunting, 272 (35%) had thinness and 26 (3%) were found to be obese. Two (0.32%) study subjects had suspect cardiac problems.Conclusions: The present study shows pattern of morbidities and malnutrition among school children. Comprehensive periodic health check-up should be carried out for early diagnosis and treatment of the common morbidities. Further studies should be carried out to assess the impact of health education.