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Introduction: Malnutrition particularly undernutrition has long been a major public health concern in southeast regions of Asia as a leading cause of child morbidity and mortality. The study was aimed to assess the malnutrition and morbidity profile in under five children in a rural area of Bangladesh.

Methods: The present cross-sectional study was carried out for a period of one year. A total of 205 children aged 1-5 years were studied using purposive sampling technique. Mothers of the eligible participants were interviewed by predesigned questionnaire. Every child was subjected to thorough anthropometric measurements. Malnutrition was assessed using WHO recommended Z-score category.

Results: About one-third (33.5%) of the children were stunted in Height for Age Z score. While 23.3% were moderately wasted and 6.5% were severely wasted in Weight for Height Z score. Severely underweight was 8.6%, 20.6% were moderately underweight and 70.8% of the children’s weight was within the normal limit for their age. In MUAC measurement, about one-fourth (21.8%) were moderate acute malnutrition (MAM) and 1.1% were severe acute malnutrition (SAM). Most prevalent disease (45.0%) was the diarrhoeal disease with respiratory tract infection was 32.0% and pneumonia was 18.0%.

Conclusions: The burden of common morbidities and prevalence of malnutrition among under-five children in this community is very high. Multi-pronged approaches aimed at improving child health care, including nutrition education, growth monitoring, exclusive breastfeeding, complementary feeding, standard case management of diarrhea and ARI would be …