Development of the Nepalese Growth Standard for the School-aged Children

Abstract

Background: Until now, there is no growth standard for Nepalese school-aged children (5-19 years). Therefore, comparison of growth of Nepalese school-aged children with the international standard developed by the WHO is not possible. Therefore, School Health and Nutrition Project (SHNP) DOHS/DOE/JICA and Public Health and Infectious Disease Research Center (PHIDReC) have agreed to conduct research to determine the growth standard of Nepalese children. Methods: This cross-sectional survey has been designed to develop the national growth standard (weight for age, height for age, weight for height, and body mass index) for Nepalese school children. The survey was conducted in 15 districts representing different ecological and administrative regions. Multistage random sampling was used for the selection of schools, and students to include different ethnicity, age (5-19 years) and sex. Anthropometric measurements of 6887 sampled students were performed by asking the age and measuring and recording of height and weight. The data was entered into SPSS and descriptive analysis was done. Results: This study determined the growth standard for Nepalese children which can be used as reference values to determine nutrition status of Nepalese population. Conclusions: There should be standardization of the findings of this study to use it for growth monitoring of the children and nutrition survey Keywords: growth standard; nutrition status; Nepalese children; school-aged children.