Nutritional Disorders among College going Adolescent Girls

Improving nutritional status during adolescence is an opportunity to improve the lives of present and the future generation. Estimating the burden of malnutrition among adolescent girls is fundamental to target intervention for current, future, and intergenerational nutritional health. The present study was aimed to estimate the prevalence of nutritional disorders viz. , under nutrition, over nutrition, obesity and anaemia among college going adolescent girls. This is cross-sectional based study carried out among 621 college going adolescent girls of age 17-19 years. Anthropometric measurements were recorded using standardized methodology as recommended by World Health Organization (WHO). Haemoglobin estimation was done using cyanmethaemoglobin method. Standard operational definitions were used. Various statistical applications like percentiles, mean, standard deviation and chi-square were used for analysis of the data. The findings of the present study confirm that the mean weight of the adolescent girls of 17, 18 and 19 years were 47.5�3.45, 49.2�4.72 and 51.2�5.54 kg respectively which were higher than the ICMR standard but lesser than the NCHS standards. It was also observed that the mean height of the adolescent girls was ranged from 149.5�5.12 to 154.65�54cm. Thus the mean height of adolescent girls in all age groups was in close proximity to NCHS and ICMR standards. The prevalence of overweight, underweight and obesity among adolescent girls were 42.4 %, 18.4 % and 1.1 % respectively. Findings of the present study show that only 17.2 % of the adolescent girls had normal haemoglobin whereas majority (82.8 %) were anaemic. Regarding the severity of anaemia a higher percentage (47.1 %) of adolescent girls had moderate anaemia. About 31.7 % of adolescent girls had mild anaemia and only a minimum percentage (3.8 %) had severe anaemia. Therefore the study highlights the complexity of nutritional disorders among adolescent girls and emphasizes their nutritional disorders as major public health concern.