Prevalence of zinc deficiency and its risk factor among school children

Zinc deficiency is the fifth leading risk factor for disease in the developing world. In fact, one-third of the world's population is at risk of zinc deficiency, ranging from 4 to 73% depending on the country. School children are facing problems like frequent illness, absenteeism, difficulty in learning & concentration, forgetfulness etc, in order to find out the main cause of these problems, a non experimental–exploratory survey study was conducted among school children in a rural setting. The results revealed that all the subjects were in the category of mild to moderate zinc deficiency, who were from rural area and inadequate dietary intake of Zinc is the risk factor.