The growth pattern of healthy breastfed infants deviates to a significant extent from the NCHS/WHO international reference. In particular, this reference is inadequate because it is based on predominantly formula-fed infants, as are most national growth charts in use today. The WHO multicentre growth reference study (MGRS), aimed at describing the growth of healthy breastfed infants living in g...

OBJECTIVE To describe the worldwide implementation of the WHO Child Growth Standards ('WHO standards'). DESIGN A questionnaire on the adoption of the WHO standards was sent to health authorities. The questions concerned anthropometric indicators adopted, newly introduced indicators, age range, use of sex-specific charts, previously used references, classification system, activities undertaken...

In April 2006 the WHO released a set of growth standards for children from birth to the age of 5 y. Prior to their release, the standards were field-tested in 4 countries. The main objective was to compare children's length/height-for-age and weight-for-length/height based on the new standards with clinician assessments of the same children. The study sampled children <5-y-old attending well-ch...

OBJECTIVE The present study analysed the impact of using the 2006 WHO Child Growth Standards ('the WHO standards') compared with the 1977 National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) international growth reference ('the NCHS reference') on the calculated prevalence of chronic malnutrition in children aged 6·0-59·9 months. DESIGN Anthropometric data were collected as part of a cross-sectional ...

Preschool children are an important nutritionally vulnerable segment of the population; they are the future citizens of the country. Therefore, prevention, early detection, prompt and effective treatment of undernutrition in preschool children had received priority attention. Height and weight have been widely used as anthropometric indices for assessment of nutritional status of preschool chil...

OBJECTIVE To compare the prevalence of underweight as calculated from Indian Academy of Paediatrics (IAP) growth curves (based on the Harvard scale) and the new WHO Child Growth Standards. METHODS We randomly selected 806 children under 6 years of age from 45 primary anganwadi (childcare) centres in Chandigarh, Punjab, India, that were chosen through multistage stratified random sampling. Chi...