scholarly journals Growth Monitoring in the Context of a Primary Health Care Programme

1994 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 1-8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fazlul Karim ◽  
Nasreen Huq ◽  
Laurine Brown ◽  
A. Mushtaque R. Chowdhury

During the last decade, growth monitoring has been promoted us an important intervention for child survival, but questions have been raised about its electiveness and feasibility in less-developed countries. A growth-monitoring programme was carried out by the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee for over four years, covering about 20,000 children under two years of age. The programme was equally accessible to all socioeconomic groups and both sexes. Children were weighed monthly in village centres, and their mothers were given health and nutrition education. A recent evaluation found modest coverage (43 %) of the target children. Accuracy in determining ages of the target children was reasonably good, with more than 90% within 30 days of actual age. Eighty-seven per cent of the Salter round scales used gave accurate results, compared with only 17% of the Salter cylinder scales. Local volunteers, mostly women, participated in growth-monitoring sessions by weighing, recording, and demonstrating how to prepare supplementary diets. Growth monitoring was associated with increased use of selected child-survival interventions such as immunization. The nutrition status of participating children was not significantly better than that of a comparable group of children who did not participate (p =.051).

2020 ◽  
Vol 30 (Supplement_5) ◽  
Author(s):  
S Ray

Abstract Background Global malnutrition, affecting over 2.6 billion people globally, represents a triple burden to health in the form of micronutrient deficiencies, under-and over-nutrition. Malnutrition reaches all parts of society, with those undernourished and deficient in vitamins and minerals often thought to be the poorer in society, whilst overnourished those wealthier. NNEdPro, an international think-tank working to develop nutrition capacity, performed a landscaping activity in Kolkata, India and noted significant undernutrition within the slum dwelling population and overnutrition among the inner-city workers. Results NNEdPro' s Mobile Teaching Kitchen (MTK) project was developed as a nutritional education tool to improve awareness of diet diversity and disease prevention amongst marginalised communities by using locally sourced foods and cooking skills. Local volunteers trained in healthy cooking transfers core principles through cooking demonstrations of sustainable, nutritional, and affordable meals. They follow a 'See One, Do One, Teach One' (S1D1T1) model to transfer knowledge to their peers. This model aims to create a sustainable solution that will enable the rural-urban slum dwellers across regions of the world to challenge food insecurity and malnutrition. Conclusions The potential of the Teaching Kitchen can extend beyond creating powerful behavior change for improved health and nutrition within local communities of both developing and developed countries. In addition to improving the wellbeing of the community, the project can also potentially create livelihood opportunities through empowering women with catering skills and having a positive impact on the health and nutritional status of the wider community. After successful impacts in India, the Mobile Teaching Kitchen model has been proposed to other 8 existing regional networks of NNEdPro such as Australia & New Zealand, Brazil, Italy, Mexico, Morocco, Switzerland, USA, and UK.


1995 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 1-9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Winkvist

The importance of child care in ensuring optimal child survival, growth, and development is increasingly recognized. Unfortunately, poor health and nutrition status of the caregivers likely limit their agility to provide adequate care in many countries. Direct evidence for this has been shown in Egypt, where poor dietary intake, low haemoglobin levels, and low vitamin B6 status of the mothers were related to less time spent on care, less response to infants’ vocalization, less vocalization to infants, and greater utilization of older siblings as caregivers. In Kenya, lower maternal caloric intake was associated with less physical contact with their toddlers. Indirect evidence can be inferred from a review of illnesses affecting women globally in the light of the physical and mental demands of adequate caregiving. For this purpose, ill health of women is evaluated from both epidemiological and anthropological perspectives.


2011 ◽  
Vol 81 (4) ◽  
pp. 238-239 ◽  
Author(s):  
Manfred Eggersdorfer ◽  
Paul Walter

Nutrition is important for human health in all stages of life - from conception to old age. Today we know much more about the molecular basis of nutrition. Most importantly, we have learnt that micronutrients, among other factors, interact with genes, and new science is increasingly providing more tools to clarify this interrelation between health and nutrition. Sufficient intake of vitamins is essential to achieve maximum health benefit. It is well established that in developing countries, millions of people still suffer from micronutrient deficiencies. However, it is far less recognized that we face micronutrient insufficiencies also in developed countries.


Author(s):  
Shailendra Meena ◽  
Pratibha Meena

Background: Nutrition education is defined as instruction or training intended to lead to acquired nutrition-related knowledge and/or nutrition-related skills and be provided in individual. It is also demonstrably capable of improving dietary behaviour and nutrition status on its own.Methods: A prospective observational study was conducted in the urban and rural ICDS projects of Bhopal district, Madhya Pradesh from July 2014 to June 2015. Three types of instruments were used: NIPCCD Suposhan Guide, a structured questionnaire and anthropometric measurements including weight, height and MUAC. Data was entered into Microsoft Excel and was analyzed by using EPI Info version 7.Results: As per Z score 7.9% children had normal weight (Z score above -1SD), 31.7% had mild underweight (Z score between -1SD to -2SD), 40.7% had moderate underweight (Z score between -2SD to -3SD) and 19.6% had severe underweight (Z score below -3SD). Reduction in moderate underweight was from 39.2% to 33.9% and in severe underweight it was from 19.3% to 15.2% in urban area. In the rural area reduction in moderate underweight was from 44.1% to 36.6% and in the severe underweight group it was from 20.4% to 9.7%.Conclusions: In our nutrition education intervention we found that a well planned, short, simple, focused and based on locally available food items delivered with little empathy can do a lot even in weaker sections of the society. 


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