Abstract
Introduction
Early-life undernutrition has been linked to poor long-term physical and cognitive development in children. A significant number of children under 5 years of age in Cambodia also suffer from anemia. However, studies examining the concomitant effects of undernutrition and anemia on children’s early development in the country are scarce. The current study aims to assess the association between malnutrition and anemia and early childhood development.
Methods
Using a subset of data from the 2014 Cambodia Demographic and Health Survey pertaining to children aged 36-59 months (n = 1733), we computed the prevalence of stunting, wasting, and anemia. We performed logistic regression to examine the relationship between being developmentally on track, based on their early childhood development index (ECDI) score, and malnutrition/anemia status, adjusting for confounders (child’s age, sex, low birth weight status, activities that promote child’s learning, mother’s education, mother’s age, residence location and wealth index).
Results
The prevalence of stunting, wasting and anemia was 36.5% (n = 633), 8.7% (n = 152), and 43.2% (n = 749), respectively. In logistic regression, after adjusting for confounders, children with both malnutrition and anemia were less likely to be developmentally on track than children who were neither malnourished nor anemic, adjusted OR = 0.62 (95% CI: 0.40, 0.96).
Conclusion
The current study confirms that early childhood undernutrition could have detrimental effects on children’s physical and cognitive development and that adding anemia could significantly worsen their early development.