Growth Monitoring is a screening tool to diagnose
nutritional, chronic systemic and endocrine disease at
an early stage. It has been suggested that growth
monitoring has the potential for significant impact on
mortality even in the absence of nutrition
supplementation or education(1). Experience in Tamilnadu,
Maharashtra and other states in India indicates that
individual growth monitoring of children is both
feasible and extremely useful(2-4).
Monitoring the growth of a child requires taking the
same measurements at regular intervals, approximately at
the same time of the day, and seeing how they change. A
single measurement only indicates the child’s size at
that moment. Currently, the Government policies for
growth monitoring focus on children less than 5 years of
age. Growth monitoring is one of the basic activities of
the under 5 clinics where the child is weighed
periodically at monthly intervals during the 1st year,
every 2 months during the 2nd year and every 3 months
thereafter up to the age of 5 to 6 years(5). Growth
monitoring is viewed in most programs as an activity for
weighing children regularly and plotting weight on
growth charts to identify undernutrition (mostly severe
Protein Energy Malnutrition) for feeding programs or to
provide data on nutritional status(6). There are no
national policies for growth monitoring beyond the age
of 6 years. Growth monitoring differs greatly among
pediatricians and often is not based on evidence. Hence,
the Indian Academy of Pediatrics has made these
consensus guidelines for growth monitoring as per IAP
Action Plan 2006(members listed in Annexure I).
|
