WORLD JOURNAL OF ADVANCE
HEALTHCARE RESEARCH

Duaa Ismael I. Al-Ahmed*, Humam Ghanim I. Zubeer, Sedra Ahmed O. Al-Nuamy

ABSTRACT

Background: Childhood obesity is a "condition in which excess body fat negatively affects a kid's health or wellbeing". Due to expanding the occurrence of Childhood obesity and its various health impacts, it is considered as a serious general wellbeing concern. Aim: To determine the prevalence of overweight and obesity among children under 5 years attended primary health care centers in the Mosul city. Methods: Study Setting: Primary health care centers were chosen as three centers from both right & left sectors of Mosul City. Study Design: Cross-section study, which is a descriptive observational study. Sample Size: Three hundred and ten (310) children of both sexes aged under 5 years attended primary health care centers were examined, this sample was distributed by multistage stratified simple random technique. Data Analysis: Descriptive and analytic statistical tools were applied. For comparison between two means, independent t-test was used and chi-square test was applied for comparison between two categorical variables. Questionnaire form was arranged utilizing summarized questions. Results: In the present study, prevalence of overweight and obesity was 10.32%, 56.4% of the study sample were males, the rest were females and 59.4% of obese children were males while 40.6% of them were females. Mean age was 24.6 months with a range of 2 – 60 months, mean weight was 11.6 kg with arrange of 4.5 – 25.5 kg, mean height 83 cm with a range of 58 – 120 cm. All of obese children ate jam and only 9.5% of normal children ate jam, 40% of obese children moderately active and 27% of normal children moderate active, whereas 40% of obese not active and 26% of normal also not active. About half of normal children were active (47%) and only 20% of obese child were active. Conclusion: The present study concludes that there was a powerful association between eating some items of feeds like jam, also there was a reverse relationship between obesity and physical activity.