17 Citation: Farah Naeem et al (2021). Prevalence and Factors of Malnutrition among children under 5 years of age in Frash Town Islamabad. Saudi J Nurs Health Care, Jan 4(1): 17-25. Saudi Journal of Nursing and Health Care Abbreviated Key Title: Saudi J Nurs Health Care ISSN 2616-7921 (Print) |ISSN 2616-6186 (Online) Scholars Middle East Publishers, Dubai, United Arab Emirates Journal homepage: https://saudijournals.com Original Research Article Prevalence and Factors of Malnutrition among children under 5 years of age in Frash Town Islamabad Farah Naeem 1* , Syed Naeem Ather Abass 2 , Sana Majeed 3 1 Lecturer, STMU, Islamabad, Pakistan 2 IHMS, Islamabad, Pakistan 3 Lecturer, WMC, Wah Cantt, Pakistan DOI: 10.36348/sjnhc.2021.v04i01.004 | Received: 29.12.2020 | Accepted: 14.01.2021 | Published: 29.01.2021 *Corresponding author: Farah Naeem Abstract Aim and Objective: This study was conducted with the aim to estimate the prevalence of malnutrition and associated factors among children under 5 years of age in Frash Town Islamabad. Methodology: It was a cross sectional descriptive study. 400 children under 5 years were selected by using non probability convenient sampling. Analysis: Descriptive statistics was used to find the frequencies and percentages while inferential statistics was used to determine the association between nutritional status of under 5 children and different variables. Results: Out of 400 subjects, 21% had normal nutritional status 20% were at risk of malnutrition and 77% were found to be malnourished. Statistically significant relationship was found between nutritional status of under 5 children and socioeconomic status, parent‟s education. Conclusion: Overall results showed that 77% of the children under 5 were malnourished. There is a need to plan composite interventions to elucidate the factors that place children at greater risk for malnutrition. Keywords: Malnutrition, Stunting, Underweight, Wasting, Children. Copyright © 2021 The Author(s): This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0) which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium for non-commercial use provided the original author and source are credited. INTRODUCTION Rational for Research Malnutrition is a serious problem all over the world including Asian countries. Pakistan is one of the countries where almost 40% to 50% of the population of under five children is malnourished including urban and rural areas. A lot of research studies had been done in different areas of Pakistan but very few studies have focused on prevalence of malnutrition and associated factors and there is a need to identify the prevalence of malnutrition and its associate factors. Estimates of the burden of malnutrition will provide vital information on preventable ill-health, and indicate the health gains possible from interventions to prevent the risk factor. Identifying and understanding of the associated factors for childhood malnutrition in Pakistan will aid in planning and budgeting for the nutritional needs of children by the policy-makers. It will also serve as a baseline for other future studies geared towards monitoring nutritional status. Although balanced nutrition is most important for human body which keeps individual healthy and provide energy for survival and also essential for good health. Nutritious and balanced diet comprises of seven different food components which are proteins, fats, carbohydrates, vitamins, minerals, fibers and water. The prime malnutrition does not start from insufficient or too much intake of nutrients, it is due to lack of primary health care and also other social and environmental factors [1]. Malnutrition occurs because of the society where population growth may lead to insufficient food supply. In other words, we can say that malnutrition is the lack of proper and unbalance nutritional deficiency in the body or insufficiency of adequate healthy nutrients in the food. It is the condition when we are not having enough healthy food in our routine diet that causes different health problems. There are several nutrients like protein, carbohydrates, fat, minerals and vitamins which are very necessary for the growth and development in the childhood. Malnutrition occurs in all ages (childhood, adulthood, and older adults). Here we will be discussing malnutrition in under five because malnutrition is very common in children at the age between 6-59 months. That is the growing age where if deficiencies occur, the child will suffer abnormal growth. In developing countries malnutrition is associated with 54% of 10.8 million deaths in children under five year of age [1].