The burden of acute malnutrition among children under five in conflict-afflicted Gaza strip: prevalence and associated factors
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background: This study aims to assess the prevalence and associated factors of Severe Acute Malnutrition (SAM) and Moderate Acute Malnutrition (MAM) among children in this region during a period of conflict. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted with a sample of 1,200 children under 5 years old, selected through stratified random sampling from three governorates in the Gaza Strip. Data were collected using structured interviews and physical examinations, including Mid-Upper Arm Circumference (MUAC) measurements to determine nutritional status based on established cut-off points. Statistical analyses were performed using IBM-SPSS, version 26. Results: = 619) fall within the range of 24-60 months. Overall, 58.3% of children live in schools, 26.6% live in houses, and 15.1% reside in tents. The overall prevalence of malnutrition across all regions was 16.6%, including 6.7% with SAM and 9.7% with MAM. The prevalence of SAM is highest in North Gaza and South Gaza (both at 6.8%) and slightly lower in the Middle Zone (6.5%). For MAM, the highest prevalence is in South Gaza (11.5%), with Middle Zone showing the lowest rate (7.3%). Logistic regression analysis indicated that children living in houses had a higher likelihood of SAM (OR = 2.36; 95% CI = 1.39-3.99) and MAM (OR = 1.44; 95% CI = 1.13-1.84), and children living in schools had a higher likelihood of SAM (OR = 2.79; 95% CI = 1.35-5.74) and MAM (OR = 2.08; 95% CI = 1.14-3.80) compared to those in tents. Notably, children residing in North Gaza were significantly more likely to experience SAM (OR = 13.2; 95% CI = 6.23-27.95) and MAM (OR = 10.51; 95% CI = 5.74-19.3) compared to those in South Gaza. Conclusion: The study highlights a high prevalence of malnutrition among children under five in the Gaza Strip, particularly among those living in houses, shelters and in the North Gaza governorate. These findings underscore the urgent need for targeted nutritional interventions and support for affected families in conflict zones.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".