Effectiveness of Home Based Diet Therapy For Malnourished Children in the Age Group of 2–5 Yrs in Rural Salem, Tamil Nadu, India

Assess the effectiveness of home based diet therapy for malnourished children an experimental only post test with control design was used. 200 first, second and third degree malnourished underfi ves between 1.6–5.5 years of age groups were under taken from Magudanchavadi and Karippatti PHC area, using Multi stage sampling technique. Pilot study was conducted atter testing the validity and reliability of tool. Most of the under five children in experimental group were between the age group of 2.6–4.5yrs. Highest and more or less similar number of malnourished children (n=39 & n= 38 respectively) were in the age group of 2.6 – 3.5 years in both experimental and control group. Female children were higher (n=57) in experimental group whereas male children were higher (n=49) in the control group. Highest number of the children both in experimental and control group had first-degree malnutrition (n = 62 & n=48 respectively). It is also observed that upper range values were more scattered when compared to lower range values shows the effectiveness of diet therapy. Overall observations shows that there was high in weight gain for all the age groups atter 4^th observations revealing increase in periodical weight gain as the time of diet therapy extends. However there is no defi nite pattern in control group. There was highly signifi cant diff erence in weight gain between the control and experimental groups, pre and post test weight of experimental group, post test weight scores of male and female. No signifi cant difference between the post test weight scores of first and third degree whereas, signifi cant difference between the post test weight scores of the first and second degree malnutrition as well as second and third degree malnutrition.