Determinants Of Acute Malnutrition Among Under-five Years Children
[A CASE STUDY OF ILLELA LOCAL GOVERNMENT SOKOTO STATE, NIGERIA]

The immunization status of the  under-five  children  that were  involved in  the study  reveals that majority  of the children  (51.9%) were immunized up to date according to the Expanded Programme on Immunization Card (EPI  Card), and this was confirmed by at least  32.7% of the mothers whose children were fully immunized. Similar results were obtained for the BacilleCalmette-Guerin (BCG) immunization where most of the children had BCG scars (46.2%) followed by 32.7% of the children that were immunized up to date. Non immunized children were few (only 3.9%) among the under-five children.  BCG is a vaccine for tuberculosis (TB) disease recommended by the World Health Organization.
On vitamin A supplement administration,  majority of the children received vitamin A supplement according to EPI card (54.8%) followed by those who were administered vitamin A as reported by their mothers (37.5 %). Only 7.6 % of the children had not received vitamin A supplementation. The high immunization and Vitamin A supplementation levels among the children is in line with the Nigeria Government’s policy through which mothers are regularly mobilized to take their children to health units for immunization.  This programme is known as routing immunization (R. I).
Results indicate that stunting was the most common malnutrition problem (38.5%) among under five children in Araba and Kalmalo district. There was also quite a high prevalence of wasting and underweight among under five children given the fact that the sample of children was not very big. The findings are slightly higher than the national figures of stunting at 33%, and wasting at five percent. There is an almost similar proportion of children underweight with the national prevalence of 14% according to Nigeria Demographic and Health Survey (UBOS and ICF International Inc., 2012).
On the levels of malnutrition by district, results found from the in tables indicate that stunting was higher in Araba district than in Kalmalo. Similarly, child wasting and underweight were highest in Araba than in kalmalo district.
A comparison of stuntedness between males and females showed that slightly more females (39.6%) were stunted compared to 38.5% of the males. For wasting and underweight, females were equally more wasted and underweight respectively than their male counterparts. However there was no significant relationship between sex of child and malnutrition.
On the age of a child,  there was a significant relationship between  age of child and underweight(p=0.041**<0.05).There were few children underweight from 13-59 months(only five) unlike those aged 12 months and below as shown in table 4.5. Also children aged 12 months and below were more stunted and wasted than those older from 13-59 months.
For birth order, stunting was more among children of birth order 1-4 than those of order 5 and above.  Children of birth order 3-4 were more wasted than those of birth order 1-2 or 5 and above
Similarly, underweight was highest among children of birth order 3-4. On the birth interval, stunting was highest among under five children with birth interval of 3-4 years than those of < 2 or even 5-6 years. For wasting, however, more children of birth interval <2 years were wasted. On underweight, only few cases of children with birth interval 4 years and below were underweight. There was however no significant relationship between birth interval and all the malnutrition indices that is stunting, wasting and underweight.
 Results also indicate that there were more stunted children among mothers aged 30-39 years (56.5%) than those 20-29 years or even 40-49 years. There was however no significant relationship between age of mother at birth and stunting. However, there were more wasted children among mothers aged 20-29 years unlike other age groups.  It is indicated that majority of underweight children were from mothers aged 40-49 years.  There was no significant relationship between age of mother and malnutrition among under five children.
On mother’s level of education, most of the children had mother with primary and secondary+ education. Stunting was less among children of mothers with no formal education.  There was no significant relationship between mother’s education level and malnutrition.
On the marital status, majority of the stunted children were from mothers who were married or cohabiting (44.6%). Similarly, there were more wasted and underweight children among married or cohabiting couples.  There was however no significant relationship between marital status and malnutrition.
There was a significant relationship between mothers occupation and malnutrition (p=0.05).
More stunted children were from peasant farmers as well as business/civil servants. In the same vein, wasting and underweight was common among peasant farmers and pastoralists.
The binary logistic regression model was fitted to examine the determinants of under-five child malnutrition. Results indicated that children aged 37-59 months were less likely to be underweight (OR=0.76) than their counterparts who were aged 12 months and below (reference category) in Araba and Kalmalo districts. In fact children aged 37-59months and child underweight were statistically significant since the p-value (p=0.03**<0.05) was less than the critical value of 0.05 at 95% confidence interval. The above findings agree with similar findings at national level that the proportion of underweight children is lowest among children 36-59 months old and highest among those 6-8 months old (UBOS and ICF International Inc., 2012).  Similar findings have been observed by several scholars in Vietnam, India, Nigeria and Kenya (Nguyen and Kam., 2008;  Sarmistha, 1999;