Malnutrition is defined as “the cellular imbalance between the supply of nutrients and energy and body’s demands for them to ensure growth, maintenance, and specific function. There are two types of malnutrition under nutrition and over nutrition. Marasmus is a kind of malnutrition caused by lack of protein that can promote weakness, muscles squandering, and lessened muscles versus fat levels, decreased vitality levels and weight reduction. Globally in 2014 it was estimated that 195 million children under-five years were stunted, 95 million were under weight and 50 million stunted. Pakistan is one of the highest prevalence of malnutrition as compared to other countries. The study aimed to assess the nutritional status of under nourished children and to find out prevalence of marasmus in under five years of children. This study was conducted in public hospital at District Head Quarter Mardan located at district Marda, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Pakistan. About 200 children were enrolled in this study at the age of 6-59months. For the assessment of nutritional status following parameters were used weight in kg, height in cm, MUAC (mid-upper Arm Circumference) in cm and Z-score. All the data was analyzed by using SPSS” statistical Package for Social Sciences” version 22. The results depict high percentage of maternal as well as paternal illiteracy, majority of the study cohort was girls as compared to boys and most of the undernutrition was prevalent infants at the age of 7-12 months as compared to other age group. Majority of children were following inappropriate feeding practices and high percentage of children were in SAM category followed by stunted. The current study concluded that maternal and paternal educational status, and poor feeding practices were major correlates of undernutrition.

Keywords: under five, gender, wasting, stunting, breastfeeding, complementary feeding