Eradication of underweight/thinness resulting from insufficient energy intake is expected to be a current and future challenge of global nutrition policy(21). Adolescents constitute a nutritionally critically important group for several reasons, including their high requirements for growth, their eating patterns, and their susceptibility to environmental influences. However, there is a dearth of data on adolescent’s nutritional status(22).
In this study, considerable number of adolescents were found to be stunted where nearly twelve percent of them were underweight. The finding of this study is comparable with the previous report from national nutrition baseline survey report for the NNP of Ethiopia which was14%(23). Complying finding was also obtained from study conducted among female adolescents from northern Ethiopia, 13.6%(24). Similar finding was found from eastern Sudan where 13.7% of adolescent girls were stunted(25) and from study conducted in Aligarh, Uttar Pradesh, India, 14.6% of adolescent boys were found to be stunted(26).
The level of adolescent underweight in this study is lower than a findings from different parts of India. From study conducted in Wardha, India 53.8% of the adolescents were found to be thin and 50.7% adolescents were stunted(27). Correspondingly, studies from West Bengal, India identified 48.3% prevalence(28, 29).This could be due to the difference in the study population and study area. However, the finding of this study is higher than the 6.4% finding from study conducted on nutritional status of in-school adolescents in Ibadan, Nigeria(30). Likewise, study from Brazil found lower prevalence (7%) of underweight among adolescents in the study area(31).
Regarding factors associated with underweight/thinness in this study, sex of the adolescents, source of drinking water, mother occupation, father occupation, household wealth and family food need source were significantly associated with underweight/thinness among adolescents. From the finding female adolescents were less likely to be underweight compared to male adolescents. This finding complies with the finding from Ibadan, Nigeria where male adolescents were at higher risk of being underweight (30). Similarly study from Indian National Nutrition Monitoring Bureau identified males to be at a higher risk of undernutrition compared to females(32). This could be due to the fact that, female adolescents in developing countries may have better access to food because they always do domestic works and they may not miss the meals. In addition, most of the time adolescent males have heavier labor work than females in developing country.
Among family socio-demographic characteristics maternal working status was associated with underweight. In this regard, adolescents whom their mothers were farmers were less likely to be underweight compared to those who were housewife. Mothers who are engaged in routine income generation of the family could have significant effect on the nutritional status of adolescents. Particularly, women who are farmers increases the family productivity and family food sources. On the other hand adolescents whom their fathers are merchants were about six times more likely to be underweight. This may be due to difference in educational status of the fathers where fathers who are government employee were more educated compared to merchant fathers. They could have more information about nutritious food that are important for children health. For instance, in study from Brazil, maternal schooling was negatively associated with the probability of being thin(31).
Adolescents whom their source of drinking water is spring were four times more likely to be underweight compared to those whom the source was tap water. This could be possibly due to higher risk of repetitive infection from contaminated water for those who use spring water as a drinking water and most of the households do not treat the water used as drinking water. In addition adolescents of families who purchase the food needed for daily consumption were more likely to be underweight compared to those who produce by their own. This might be associated with the more access to variety and amount of food source for adolescents of families who produce by their own.
On the other hand, adolescents from households with medium economic status were less likely to be underweight compared to those from higher economic status. This finding is relatively contrary to the usual findings of the studies on factors associated with nutritional status(27, 33, 34). The reason why adolescents in the middle economic status were less likely to be underweight in this study could be due to the difference in nutritionally important characteristics among the population in the middle and higher economic status. Families in the higher economic status in this study area were mostly merchants and less educated compared to those who are in the middle economic status who are who are mostly government employees and more educated. In addition most of those in the middle economic status were farmers and their main source of food for consumption for such families is producing by their own. In this study adolescents of families who produce the food they consume by their own were less likely to be underweight.
In this study we have tried to assess the nutritional status of adolescents and associated factors in which there are scanty of evidences with respect to this research area. We have tried to identify important risk factors for adolescents’ malnutrition in the study area. Nevertheless there are important limitations of this study. Considerable limitations of this study are small sample size and exclusion of out of school adolescents which could have be in different scenario.
In general Significant number of adolescents in this study were found to be underweight and female adolescents, adolescents using spring water for drinking, adolescents whose their mother was unemployed and those whose their family achieve food need through purchase were at higher risk of underweight. Responsible stakeholders working on nutrition programs should give due consideration for adolescents particularly in developing countries. Further studies with stronger design should be conducted to determine the nutritional status and its determinants