Govt to change methods to measure child growth

The government blames the high malnutrition rate of 43 per cent among children in the 0 to 6 age group on wrong methods adopted to measure weight and height.

The yet to be published findings of the National Family Health Survey 3 have therefore prompted the government to change its standards for measuring child growth.

The Ministry of Women and Child Development is all set to adopt the standards for height and weight released by the World Health Organisation last year.

The present concept of normal height and weight is based on the measurement of US children who were fed milk powder. Now the new criterion will be based on babies who are breast fed, says secretary Chaman Kumar.

The new growth curves were evolved by WHO after a six-year study based on the growth data of 8,500 children from six countries including India, Brazil, Ghana, US, Norway and Oman.

"It would marginally improve rates by one or two per cent,'' say officials of National Institute of Nutrition, Hyderabad, which comes under the Indian Council of Medical Research.

The percentage of undernourished children is 42.4 per cent as against 45 per cent 10 years ago in NFHS-2, while the percentage of severely malnourished children has gone up from 15 per cent a decade ago to 17 per cent.

The change is marginal, but anganwadi workers will have to be trained thoroughly to use the new method, said Vandana Puri of Jan Swasthya Abhiyan.