Stunting and ‘overweight’ in the WHO Child Growth Standards – malnutrition among children in a poor area of China

Public Health Nutrition

Shusheng Luo¹  Xiaoli Wang¹  Wenyuan Zhou¹  Bengt Höjer¹  Yan Wang¹  Sufang Guo¹ 

关键词: Stunting;    WHO growth standards;    Overweight;   

DOI  :  10.1017/S1368980009990796

学科分类：卫生学

来源: Cambridge University Press

【 摘 要 】

ObjectiveThe aims of the present paper were to assess the nutritional status of children under 5 years old using the 2006 WHO Child Growth Standards (‘the WHO standards’) and to compare the results with those obtained using the National Center for Health Statistics/WHO international growth reference (‘the NCHS reference’).DesignThis was a community-based cross-sectional survey. The WHO standards were used to calculate Z-scores of height-for-age (HAZ), weight-for-age (WAZ), weight-for-height (WHZ) and BMI-for-age (BMIZ).SettingFifty counties of thirteen mid-western provinces, China.SubjectsA total 8041 children aged2 was only 1·4 %. The prevalence of stunting was 21·9 % and of underweight was 12·7 % by the NCHS reference.ConclusionsStunting was the most serious problem that was impeding child growth and development. The high rate of ‘overweight’ was a false impression, the truth being ‘stunting overweight’, and the way to solve it should be to increase protein and other nutrients in the diet at an early age.

【 授权许可】

Unknown