Objective: To analyze the malnutrition status and change trend of the children under the age of 5 years in China, and to afford the reference information for the establishment of children nutrition related policies.
Methods: According to the classification of east, middle and west areas in China, as well as urban and rural, the multi-stage cluster probability sampling was used to select randomly total 17607 children under the age of 5 years, whose weight and height were measured by standard method.
Results: In Chinese children under the age of 5 years, the stunting prevalence of Chinese children under 5 years was 9.9%, the underweight prevalence was 5.9% and the wasting prevalence was 2.2%. There were significant differences of the malnutrition prevalence between the urban areas and rural areas (P < 0.05). The prevalence of stunting of rural children was 5.3 times higher than that of urban as well as the prevalence of underweight in rural was 4.6 times higher than that in urban. In the same way, the prevalence of children malnutrition in middle and west areas was significantly higher than that of the prevalence in east area (P < 0.05). In comparison with the data of Chinese Nutrition and Health Survey (CNHS) in 2002, the prevalence of children stunting and underweight decreased by 30.8% and 24.4% respectively in 2006.
Conclusion: In recent years, the malnutrition prevalence of Chinese children under the age of 5 years declined yearly and the decreases of prevalence of children malnutrition in urban areas was more faster than that in rural areas. It showed that the nutrition status of the children in west areas needs more improvement and at the same time, the status of children nutrition of west area also requires more concerns.