Abstract:
To describe the nutritional status and the environmental and health conditions of the Pataxó children from five villages of Minas Gerais State, Brazil. Among the under 10 years old, weight and height/length were classified according to the growth standard of WHO. Questionnaires evaluating environmental conditions of the households and health conditions of under 5 years old were based in the First National Survey of Indigenous People`s Health and Nutrition. Among the 70 children evaluated (93.3%), 34 were under 5 years old. Nutritional deficits were not observed and overweight was registered for 11.4% of the children. Most of the children (74,3%) lived in households with electric energy, 95% in households with toilets and 52.9% in households that threw waste in septic tanks. Six or more antenatal appointments were reported by 82.4% of the mothers of the children under five years old and 91.2% started the antenatal appointments within the first trimester of pregnancy. Regards the reasons of reported hospital admissions in the last 12 months (23.5%), only 1 case was due to diarrhea and none of them was due to respiratory infections. Universal coverage was observed for most of the immunizations evaluated. The inexistence of nutritional deficits among the Pataxó children could be associated to better housing and sanitation conditions and coverage of basic childhood health actions when compared to the conditions reported by the First National Survey of Indigenous People`s Health and Nutrition and by other studies. The study intends to subsidize discussions and actions to improve the nutritional status of the indigenous children in Brazil.
