Worldwide practices in child growth monitoring
Section snippets
Methods
A questionnaire on child growth charts was sent to the Ministries of Health in 202 countries and territories through WHO regional and country offices. The questionnaire was developed centrally and pretested for comprehensibility with nutritional advisers based in the six WHO regions. The questions were kept as short as possible for clarity and to improve responsiveness, and all but two had precoded answers. The original English version was translated into French and Spanish, and the translated
Results
Of the 202 countries and territories contacted, 178 (88%) responded to the questionnaire and 154 (76%) sent hard copies of growth charts (806 charts). Table I presents the coverage and response rate of the survey by geographic region.
The growth charts received differed in layout and age range covered. The majority (55%) were used for infants and young children (0 to 5 years) and 29% covered birth to adolescence (0 to 18 years), whereas the rest applied to variable age spans (eg, 0 to 6 years,
Discussion
A worldwide survey of national practices in the use and interpretation of growth charts has been conducted. The high response rate demonstrated that growth monitoring is an intrinsic part of pediatric care around the world. This underscores the importance of taking advantage of the opportunity provided by the development of the new international growth reference to review existing practices and strengthen local programs to overcome current problems. In this process, the particular circumstances
Acknowledgements
We are grateful to Ms Monika Blössner for her assistance in the development of the survey questionnaire.
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