A COMPARATIVE ASSESSMENT OF NUTRITIONAL STATUS BETWEEN TRIBAL AND NON TRIBAL UNDER FIVE CHILDREN IN MALAPPURAM DISTRICT, KERALA

Despite recent achievements in economic progress in India, the fruits of development have failed to secure a better nutritional status among all children of the country. Of the Indian states, Kerala is well known for its achievements in health sector. The health indicators in Kerala are at par with the western developed world. But of late, the widely acclaimed Kerala model of health has started showing some disturbing trends. Growing evidence suggest there exists a wide disparity in nutritional level of children between different sections of the society in Kerala. Nutritional status of children in two communities tribal and non tribal was studied using conventional anthropometric measures. It seems that the health indicators are comparably low in the tribal regions than that of non tribal regions. This finding may take us to think of some inequitable access to health facilities in between these two groups that seems against the much upholded kerala model of development and deprived atributes of human development.The study also looks into the influence of maternal education and income of the family on the nutritional status of children in the study area. Method of Study: The comparative study was conducted in tribal areas of Malappuram district in Kerala by using anthropometric measures. The villages adjacent to the tribal areas were included in the study as non-tribal population. To study the nutritional status among under five children 100 tribal and 100 non tribal children were taken. The tribal and non-tribal children were selected from Malappuram district through cluster sampling method. Tribal and non tribal were selected separately. The study was conducted among under five children. For the purpose of the study an econometric model was constructed Yi=β1+β2X2i+β3X3i+ui.Mothers?education and income of the family are taken as the explanatory variables. Results: The study revealed more of tribal (55%) children compared to non-tribal (28%) were suffering from protein energy malnutrition and 7.35% of tribal children were severely malnourished. Tribals have low socio-economic status, poor nutritional status, increased prevalence of morbid conditions compared to non-tribal population. It is also revealed that education of mother and income of the family together explains 71% of variation in child nutritional status.