Effectiveness of High Calorie Cereal Milk on Growth Parameters among Malnourished Children at Selected Home for Children in Coimbatore

Background: Mahatma Gandhi said that ‘for hungry, God is bread’, his statement regarding vast section of Indian population. It is a challenge for health planner to prevent malnutrition. The investigator during her clinical posting found that children were malnourished even if they feed well. As a developing country like India, most of the children are malnourished and below poverty line. On this situation parents are also unaware about the nutritional requirement of children. Children living in ‘home for children’, the caretaker only provide care for them and they take care of a large number of children. These factors adversely affect the nutritional status of the children. All these experiences are prompted the investigator to undertake a study on effectiveness of high caloric cereal milk as a supplementation Aim: To assess the effectiveness of High Calorie Cereal Milk on Growth Parameters among Malnourished Children at selected Home for Children at Coimbatore. Method: in this pre test -post test Quasi experimental with control group design, Survey to identify malnutrition and Non probability purposive sampling technique was used to select the samples for the study. The researcher randomly selected the homes for experimental group and control group. The experimental group received the intervention of high caloric cereal milk & control group followed the same diet available normally. Findings: The clinical evaluation of the undernourished children before and after the HCCM supplementation in the experimental group were the general appearance in the post test group having17.65 percentage improved from the pre test 5.88 percentage. At the same time in the control group, same rate in pre and post test.