Combating Poverty and Hunger through Nutritional Intervention for Improved Cognitive Functions in School Age Children in Somolu Local Government Area of Lagos State, Nigeria
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Date
2019
Authors
Onwuama, M.A.C
Sodade, O.
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Journal of International Council for Health, Physical Education, Recreation, Sport and Dance. Africa Region
Abstract
Poverty and deprivation has led to insufficiency, inadequate nutrition, poor growth and cognitive development in vulnerable groups especially school age children in developing countries. A Randomised Control Trial study assessed influence of a 12-week nutritional intervention on public primary school children in Ayinke and Ladilak primary schools categorized as deprived schools in Somolu Areas of Lagos State. The population of the study was 508 school aged children, simple random sampling technique was used to select 100 participants for the study. 50 school aged children in Ayinke School formed the intervention group while the other 50 in Ladilak School formed the control group. 84 participants completed the study. A standardized Child psychological assessment tool Raven's Colored Progressive Matrices (CPM) questionnaire (r=0.89) was used to ascertain cognitive ability of participants. Study applied CPM as pretest and posttest and biometric measurements of mid upper arm circumference, weight, height-age ratio for data collection. Data analysis applied descriptive statistics of frequency counts, percentages and percentiles while paired sample t-test was used to test the hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. The results revealed differences between pre intervention biometric statistics, weight to height ratios and age to height ratios and showed that the learning ability of participants improved by 0.751(75.1%) in 68 participants using the color matrices at 0.05 level of significance while the CPM (Pre test and post test) revealed that the paired samples the variables indicated that nutritional intervention influenced body weight 0.997(99.7%) in 81 participants and the mid arm circumference had correlation of 0.971(97.1%) in 78 participants. The results also showed that the cognitive abilities of participants in the intervention group improved. In conclusion, most primary school children suffer malnutrition in various forms such as stunting and wasting. School based nutrition could be an incentive for families to send children to school and also for children to stay in school. Study recommends provision and access to meals at school. Therefore, government should promote supervised school feeding programme, while parents to be educated to ensure adequate nutrition at home to achieve Zero hunger
Description
Scholarly articles
Keywords
Poverty, , Hunger, , Nutritional Intervention , Cognitive Functions , School , Research Subject Categories::SOCIAL SCIENCES::Social sciences::Education
Citation
Onwuama, M.A.C., & Sodade, O. (2019). Combating Poverty and Hunger through Nutritional Intervention for Improved Cognitive Functions in School Age Children in Somolu Local Government Area of Lagos State, Nigeria. Journal of International Council for Health, Physical Education, Recreation, Sport and Dance. Africa Region. 5(2). 48-57