• AnitaGuest Faculty, Department of Geography, Government Girls College, Mahuwa, Dausa, Rajasthan, India. Electronic address: anitajnu27@gmail.com..
• Guest Faculty, Department of Geography, Government Girls College, Mahuwa, Dausa, Rajasthan, India. Electronic address: anitajnu27@gmail.com.
• Nutrition. 2024 Sep 1; 125: 112487112487.

BackgroundStreet children are poverty-stricken and have insufficient money to meet their daily nutritional requirements. They do not have a proper place to sleep and defecate. They sleep at traffic signals, in religious places, and on footpaths. This exposes them to pollution, dirt, and other pathogens.ObjectivesThis study aimed to measure the nutritional status of street children in Delhi using Z-scores and Composite Index of Anthropometric Failure (CIAF).MethodsAnthropometric measurements are direct methods of measuring the nutritional status of humans. Anthropometric indicators such as underweight (weight-for-age), stunting (height-for-age) and BMI/wasting (weight-for-height) are used to measure the nutritional status of street children. Z-scores and CIAF are calculated for street children based on the WHO 2009 reference.ResultsAccording to Z-scores, stunting (56%) is the most common anthropometric failure among street children followed by underweight (31%) and wasting (19%). According to the CIAF, 63% of street children are malnourished, where stunting (37%) is the highest single burden of anthropometric failure, followed by wasting (3%) and underweight (1%); children suffering from the double burden of anthropometric failure are 9%, and children suffering from the triple burden of anthropometric failure (i.e., wasting, stunting, and underweight) are 13%.ConclusionA high incidence of stunting points to poor quality of food and suggests prolonged nutrition deficiency among street children. The Z-score or conventional measures of anthropometry underestimate the total burden of malnutrition among street children, while CIAF provides an estimation of children with single-burden, double-burden, and triple-burden malnutrition or total burden of malnutrition.Copyright © 2024 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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