Health Status of Children in the Day Care Centers

보육시설 영유아의 건강상태 현황

Purpose: To investigate the health status such as growth, nutrition, disease, vaccination in child day care centers. Methods: A cross-sectional descriptive study was conducted on 280 children at 6 day care centers in Seoul. Parent completed a structured questionnaire and illness-logs from day-care staff were gathered for a month, June 2006. Body weight, height were measured and BMI was calculated. Results: Failure of growth was found in 2.2% of the children. Also there was 5.4% of the children who were under 5% and 8.6% were above 95% on BMI chart. For 4.3% of the children diseases were asthma, chronic rhinitis, sinusitis and so on. About six percent of the children missed vaccination such as Japanese encephalitis, DTaP and polio. Incidence rates of respiratory infection was 1.45 and gastroenteritis was .28. As a result, 22.5 % of the day care children had these kinds of health rick factors stated above and results showed statistical difference between health-groups and health-risk groups in age, duration of day care center, family structure, marital status of parent. Conclusion: A considerable number of the children at child daycare centers had the health risk factors. These results shows there is a need to develop and make provisions for health service programs by health experts in child day care centers.