Lactancia materna y malnutricion en zonas rurales del nordeste del Brasil

Abstract

A nutritional survey of infants and young children was conducted in four rural villages of the northeast Brazilian state of Pernambuco. That survey sought information relating, among other things, to the nutritional status of young children, parental land ownership, maternal literacy, and the duration of freast-feeding. This article treats data collected during the survey that relate to the nutritional status of infants within the survey population. In all, 225 of the 689 families surveyed were found to have children less than one year old within the household. In terms of the Gomez weight-for-age classification, 50,3 percent of the infants over three months old were found to be malnourished, with 17,9 percent exhibiting grade II or grade III malnutrition. A correlation was also found between these infants' nutritional status and parental land ownership. In addition, a statistically significant difference was found between the nutritional status of ifants who were never breast-fed and those who were being breast-fed at the time of the survey. However, no significant correlation was found between parental land ownership and the duration of breast-feeding. Similarly, no significant association was found between the duration of breast-feeding and maternal illiteracy was very pervasive at all socio-economic levels within the study population. The principal reasons given for weaning infants