Background: The government has made provisions to improve the nutrition of stunted children under the age of five nationally by providing iron folic acid (IFA) tablet since conception. However, these drugs were not able to reduce the incidence of stunted growth. The aim of this study is to assess the effect of moringa intervention during pregnancy on the incidence of stunted growth in children between the ages of 36 to 42 months.
Design and methods: This study is a follow-up to an experimental RCT-DB study during pregnancy. The interventions given were PG (Moringa Flour), EG (Moringa Extract) and IG (IFA) which was used as control.
Results: The highest number of children that had stunted growth after taking the PG by IG and EG extracts were 66 (41.5%), 53 (33.3%) and 40 (25.2%), respectively. The stunted risk factor analysis did not show a significant relationship to the stunted incidence. Furthermore, the consumption and dietary patterns of children were based on only fat consumption which was associated with stunted incidence (p<0.05). The results of multivariate analysis showed that the EG extract was effective in reducing the incidence of stunted growth (p<0.005) and as a protective factor of 0.431 times the incidence of stunted growth (LL-UL=0.246-0.754).
Conclusions: The administration of Moringa oleifera extract during pregnancy prevents the incidence of stunted growth in children.