Can Nepal Achieve Nutritional Targets by 2030? A Trend Analysis of childhood undernutrition in Nepal from 2001 to 2016.

OBJECTIVE This study assesses the prevalence of childhood undernutrition from 2001 to 2016 and estimate projections of undernutrition for 2016-2030 in Nepal. DESIGN The study used data from four rounds of a cross-sectional survey of Nepal Demographic and Health Survey (NDHS) conducted in 2001, 2006, 2011 and 2016. Descriptive analyses were conducted to calculate prevalence, binary logistic regression was used to test the significance of trends over time and autoregressive integrated moving average model was used to forecast the prevalence of childhood undernutrition. SETTINGS The children and household member datasets from four NDHS were merged to assess the trends of childhood undernutrition in Nepal. PARTICIPANTS A total of 16 613 children (8399 male and 8214 female) under 5 years of age were selected for anthropometric measurements using a stratified cluster random sampling method. RESULTS Overall results show a decline in prevalence of stunting from 57·2 % to 35·8 % (P < 0·001), underweight from 42·7 % to 27 % (P < 0·001) and wasting from 11·2 % to 9·7 % (P < 0·05) from 2001 to 2016. However, different population subgroups have a higher prevalence of undernutrition than national average. Further, the analyses show that the prevalence of stunting will decline to 14·3 % and wasting to 8·4 % by 2030. CONCLUSION A remarkable decrease in the prevalence of stunting and underweight has been observed over the last 15 years. Nepal is likely to achieve the nutritional targets for stunting but not for wasting by 2030. Given large subpopulation variations, further improvement in undernutrition require more specific, targeted and localised programmes.