Abstract:
Introduction: Malnutrition (under nutrition) is one of the health problems in developing countries, and its occurrence is aggravated by poor hygienic condition and little access to health problem. Prison is an institution where diverse people lived who had violated the law, some of them possibly innocent lives, it is not just a center for punishing the individual who violet the law; but also a center of rehabilitation as well, the aim of this study is identifying factors associated with under nutrition to alleviate the problem.
Objective: To assess the prevalence and associated factors of under nutrition among prison inmate, in North Gondar prison, Northwest Ethiopia in 2015.
Methods: Institutional based cross sectional study was conducted in north Gondar prison from March 1 to 30, 2015. Simple random sampling techniques was employed to recruit a total of 420 participants during the study period .Data has been collected by using pre tested structured questionnaire which consisting of characteristics related to socio demographic profile, associated factors for under nutrition and Anthropometric characteristics. Cleaned data was entered to Epi info version 7 and transferred to SPSS version 20 for further analysis, Bivariate and multivariate logistic regression was fitted to identify factors associated with under nutrition. Significance variable was obtained at crude and adjusted odds ratio with 95% CI and p< 0.05.
Result The overall prevalence of under nutrition in this study area was 38.8% out of this 2.6% severe malnutrition, 19% moderate malnutrition and 78.4% mild malnutrition. Factors which are significantly associated with under nutrition were additional food, illness, food diversity and presence of job in the prison.
Conclusion and recommendation This result showed that the prevalence of under nutrition among prison inmates of incarcerated for at least 6 months was high especially inmates who didn’t get additional food and had an illness, thus the prison authority design a strategy for intervention concerning about increasing personal value and food diversity.
