Abstract:
Introduction: - The major problem that currently faced urban areas is the increased
population, which resulted in lack of sufficient food for the community. Therefore,
understanding the determinants of HFI is important to design interventions for ensuring
food security in cities like Addis Ababa. Poor nutritional status of children and women is
also problem in Ethiopia. Thus, it is also crucial to generate evidence about the nutritional
status of women to reduce maternal mortality and morbidity.
Objective: -To assess household food insecurity and nutritional status of women of the
reproductive age group, in Kirkos Sub-city, Addis Ababa.
Methods: - Community based cross sectional study was conducted among Women of
Reproductive Age Group in October 2020.A multiple stage sampling procedure was used
and at first, five of sub-city’s woredas were selected through random sampling technique.
Secondly, the calculated sample (532) was proportionally allocated to all the selected
woredas. Finally, eligible women were selected from the sampling frame using
systematic random sampling. Data were collected through questionnaire and by
measuring the height and weight to calculate BMI. Multiple binary regressions was used
to quantify the association between household food security and nutritional outcomes of
women, while considering other covariates potentially associated with the outcome
variables of interest.
Results: Four hundred eighty seven women were involved with a response rate of 91.54
% and it was found that 80.9% households were food insecure while 12.9% women were
underweight. Households headed by female were less likely to be food secured compared
with male headed households (AOR= 0.09, 95% CI= 0.03-0.29). Women aged 20-29
years were more likely to be food secured compared with women belong to the age group
15-19 years,(AOR= 7.42, 95% CI= 1.59-14.50). Households with > 2 children of under 5
years were more food insecured than households with no children <5 years (AOR= 0.04,
95% CI; 0.02-0.13). Besides, the likely of underweight for a woman is higher for food
insecured households than the secured ones