Growth Monitoring in Under-Three Children Using the Mother Child Protection Card
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.21048/ijnd.2020.57.4.25983Keywords:
Urban, Under-Three Children, Low Middle Income Families, Growth Monitoring, Mother Child Protection Card, Nutritional Status.Abstract
Right from its inception, ICDS programme envisaged monthly weighing and monitoring of growth in under-three children for early detection of under-nutrition. Currently accurate portable digital balances are available in anganwadi and Mother Child Production Card (MCPC) with child growth charts has been provided to children. A community based mixed longitudinal study was taken up in under-three children from urban low middle income families to assess feasibility and impact of growth monitoring and appropriate nutrition education using MCPC. Monthly weighing of children and plotting the weight-for-age in the MCPC was carried out by the research staff. A total of 5708 children were enrolled and followed up over 32879 visits between 2015 and 2019. Plotting the weight-for-age of the child in growth chart enabled identification of underweight children at the time of the visit so that appropriate nutrition and health education and care can be provided. Monthly weighing and plotting weight-for-age in growth chart enabled identification of small children growing along their own trajectory and prevented them from being mislabelled as under-nourished. Children showing deterioration in Weight for age Z score (WAZ) as compared to earlier visit(s) were readily identified and given needed advice. Personalised nutrition and health education provided at each visit taking into account current nutritional status, morbidity and Infant and Young Child Feeding Practices (IYCF) helped in preventing rise in underweight rates in the first 18 months and brought about some improvement in nutritional status of moderate and severely underweight children. It is feasible to operationalize growth monitoring as envisaged in Poshan Abhiyaan and accelerate the pace of reduction in under-nutrition in under three children.Downloads
Metrics
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
All the articles published in IJND are distributed under a creative commons license. The journal allows the author(s) to hold the copyright of their work (all usages allowed except for commercial purpose).
Please contact us at editor@informaticsglobal.com for permissions related to commercial use of the article(s).
Accepted 2020-09-14
Published 2020-11-24
References
National Nutrition Monitoring Bureau: Technical Report for the year 1979 and pooled report .1974-1979 available athttps://www.nin.res.in/downloads/Report_for_the_year_1979.pdf Accessed on 28 July2020
ICDS programme Ministry of Women and Child Development: Integrated child development services program (ICDS) available at www./icds-wcd.nic.in/frameworkapip.pdf Accessed on 28 July 2020.
Ramachandran, P. and Kalaivani, K. Nutrition transition in India: Challenges in achieving global targets. Proc. Ind. Nat. Sci. Acad., 2018, 84, 821-833. DOI: https://doi.org/10.16943/ptinsa/2018/49450
IIPS. National Family Health Survey-1 available at http://rchiips.org/nfhs/pub_nfhs-1.shtml, accessed on 28 July 2020
IIPS. ‘National Family Health Survey-2 available at http://rchiips.org/nfhs/pub_nfhs-2.shtml, accessed on 28 July 2020
IIPS. National Family Health Survey- 3. available at http://rchiips.org/nfhs/pub_nfhs-3.shtml, accessed on 28 July 2020
IIPS ‘National Family Health Survey-4 Fact sheet available at http://rchiips.org/nfhs/pub_nfhs-4.shtml, accessed on 28 July 2020.
NNMB technical reports 21 to 26 available at http://nnmbindia.org/NNMBREPORTS-web.pdf accessed on 28 July 2020
Prabhakar, K., Kalaivani, K., Kowsalya, S. and Ramachandran, P. Use of mother child protection card for improving infant feeding practices. Ind. J. Nutr. Diet., 2019, 56, 351-364. DOI: https://doi.org/10.21048/ijnd.2019.56.4.23980
Lakshmi, R.V., Subapriya, M., Kalaivani, K. and Ramachandran, P. Nutritional status of preschool children from urban low income families. Ind. J. Nutr. Diet., 2019, 56, 265-273. DOI: https://doi.org/10.21048/ijnd.2019.56.3.23702