Abstract (provisional)
Background
There is a dearth of information on the health of pastoral Fulani children living in south western Nigeria. These are fully settled pastoralists whose economy are centred on cattle and farming. In other to monitor and plan appropriate nutritional intervention for their children, a cross-sectional study was carried out to determine the prevalence of malnutrition of pastoral Fulani children.
Findings
Fulani's children aged 6 months to 15 years, living in 61 settlements in Kwara, Ogun and Oyo States in South western Nigeria participated in the study. Heights and weights of 164 girls and 167 boys were measured. Their anthropometric indices, height-for-age (HA), weight-for-height (WH), and weight-for-age (WA) Z-scores determined. The prevalence of stunting (HAZ < -2), wasting (WHZ < -2) and underweight (WAZ < -2) was 38.7%, 13.6%, and 38.7%, respectively when compared to the reference NCHS/WHO standard used for defining stunting, wasting and underweight. Boys were more malnourished than the girls, but this was not significant (stunting: chi square=0.36; df=1; P=0.54); (underweight: chi square=1.10; df=1; P=0.29); and (wasting: chi square=0.00; df=1; P=0.98) The mean of Z-scores of Height-for-age, Weight-for-age and Weight-for-height in children were -1.502, -1.634 and -0.931 respectively. The SD was 1.52, 1.09 and 1.20 respectively. Using WHO Malnutrition Classification systems, 38.7% of the children were found to be malnourished.
Conclusion
These results indicate high prevalence of malnutrition among settled pastoral Fulani children, possibly due to changes food habits and lifestyle occasion by the transition from nomadic to sedentary living. We suggest the inclusion of Fulani's settlements in nutritional intervention for these areas.
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