Avaliação do estado nutricional da população infantil Baniwa, Alto Rio Negro - Noroeste Amazônico

Abstract

The Word Health Organization recognizes that the nutritional evaluation is an important key to analyze the health condition of certain territory. During the last decade the world population has been passing through a dietary and nutritional transition. As a result the malnutrition has been decreasing and the overweight rising. Parallel this phenomena, it is also observed an epidemiological transition which consists in the decreasing of infecto-contagious diseases and the rising of chronical and degenerative diseases. However, the first nutritional survey conducted in 2009 among the Brazilian Indigenous Population showed high malnutrition rates when compares to non-indigenous population. There is a lack of nutritional studies which does not allow to determinate the epidemiological status of each different indigenous ethnics groups, municipality or province. Therefore, the objective of the present study was to evaluate the nutritional status of Baniwa indigenous children from the Middle Içana River, located at Rio Negro River Basin, Amazonas, Brazil. This epidemiologic survey evaluated children under 60 months old from the Middle Içana River, assisted by the Indigenous Special Sanitary District of the Upper Rio Negro. It was collected variables weight, height, age and sex in order to obtain the anthropometric index (W/A-weight for age, W/H-weight for height, H/A- height for age, and BMI-body mass index), as recommended by the WHO. The data was analyzed using the WHO – 2006 and the NCHS-1997 reference curves standards. The results indicated high prevalence of low weight-for-age (9.5% and 13.1%), height-for-age (46.3% and 39.5%), weight-for- height (7.1% and 1.2%), for both WHO and NCHS references. The BMI indicated moderate levels of overweight (9.5%). Therefore, the present study findings showed high rate of malnutrition among Baniwa indigenous children which are consistent with other studies that showed national malnutritional rates six times higher among Indigenous Children when compared with nonindigenous children. Thus, these results suggest that there is a need for effective health programs aimed to improve the nutritional status of the Baniwa indigenous children.