Majallah-i Dānishgāh-i ̒Ulūm-i Pizishkī-i Bābul (Jan 2004)
Height and weight of less than 5-year-old children, Tonekabon, 2000-01
Abstract
Background and Objective: With respect to the increasing importance of the application of height and weight indexes to find out the nutritional status of children in society, this study was carried out on children aged less than 5 years living in Tonekabon (A city in west of Mazandaran). Methods: In this descriptive study, 432 healthy children who were less than 5 years old were randomly selected by clustered sampling and were studied in four clusters, which 108 children less than 5 years old were in each cluster, and their height and weight were measured. Findings: The results indicated that the weight and height of children in all age groups were lower than the NCHS standard. Retardation in height growth was identically observed in all ages about eighty percent of the children had 2 standard deviation (SD) less than the mean of height for their age that it showed a previous moderate malnutrition. Thirty-seven percent of children had two SD less than the mean of weight for their age, which showed a moderate malnutrition. In this study, the boys were 81% (167 persons) and 38% (79 persons) less than -2 SD from NCHS in terms of height and weight for age respectively, while the girls were 80% (158 persons) and 38% (71 persons) less than -2 SD from NCHS in terms of height and weight for age, respectively. Conclusion: The results indicated that weight and height values of Tonekabonian children had many differences with NCHS standard, it is more conspicuous in individual’s height, and approximately a large proportion of the studied ones had different degrees of malnutrition.
