The World Health Organization (WHO) Expert Committee on Physical Status: The Use and Interpretation of Anthropometry established reference anthropometric standards for the growth of healthy infants and children. As part of a prospective clinical study of dengue virus infections in infants, we measured the length and weight of healthy infants in San Pablo, Laguna, Philippines at two scheduled st...

Adequate nutrition is essential in early childhood to ensure healthy growth, proper organ formation and function, a strong immune system, and neurological and cognitive development. Child malnutrition – as measured by poor child growth – is an important indicator for monitoring population nutritional status and health. In 2013, about 17%, or 98 million children under five years of age in develo...

V.R. Preedy (ed.), Handbook of Anthropometry: Physical Measures of Human Form in Health and Disease, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4419-1788-1_2, © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2012 Abstract Percentiles and Z -scores are often used to assess anthropometric measures to help evaluate children’s growth and nutritional status. In this chapter, we fi rst compare the concepts and applications of percenti...

Breastfeeding and human milk are the normative standards for infant feeding and nutrition. Given the documented short- and long-term medical and neurodevelopmental advantages of breastfeeding, infant nutrition should be considered a public health issue and not only a lifestyle choice. The American Academy of Pediatrics reaffirms its recommendation of exclusive breastfeeding for about 6 months, ...

The growth of the fetus, which is strongly associated with the outcome of pregnancy, reflects interplay of several physiological and pathological factors. The assessment of fetal growth is based on comparison of birthweight (BW) or estimated fetal weight (EFW) to standards which define reference ranges at a spectrum of gestational ages. Most birthweight standards do not take into account effect...

Anthropometric measurements of neonates are an important clinical tool for diagnosis of abnormally small or large neonates. This study aimed at finding the means of the anthropometric measurements among newborn babies in Khartoum state and to relate the tendency of the anthropometric parameters to maternal and paternal factors. This observational hospital-based study was carried out in 3 hospit...

I n 2006, the World Health Organization (WHO) published multiethnic growth charts for children younger than 5 years compiled of growth data of 6669 infants from 6 different countries (the United States, Norway, Oman, Brazil, India, and Ghana). Originally, the rationale for the construction of the multiethnic WHO standards stemmed from an earlier study that reported nearly similar growth pattern...

India's rapid economic growth has not entirely left the poor behind. The fraction of people who live under the poverty line has gone down from 46 per cent in 1983 to 28 per cent in 2004-05. Poor people can now afford cell phones, TVs, and some other of life's little treats. The SC/ST population has not been left out of this trend. Indeed it has caught up: In 1983, the average worker who was not...