New charts are based on contemporary data on growth and development of 33,991 children in 14 Indian cities
New Delhi : Compared to eight years ago, 18-year-old boys and girls from India’s middle and upper classes are 3 cm and 1 cm taller, respectively, according to the latest growth charts published this year for children aged five to 18. The growth figures — last updated in 2007, using data collected more than two decades ago — reveal upsides and downsides. The new charts reflect the rise of taller and heavier urban children. Girls are taller earlier, but stop growing once they hit puberty, which is happening sooner.
“Boys and girls are heavier than before, and modern India is seeing a huge epidemic of obesity,” said Vaman Khadilkar, consultant paediatric endocrinologist at Jehangir Hospital, Pune, and convener of the Indian Academy of Pediatrics’ (IAP) growth-chart committee. Convened in January 2014, the committee worked on the revisions and published its findings and charts in the journal Indian Pediatrics this year. The new charts are based on contemporary data on growth and development of 33,991 children of upper and middle socio-economic groups living in 14 Indian cities, reports IANS.
Growth charts answer questions that often plague parents: Is my child growing well or not? Is she gaining enough weight and height? The problem with those questions is, no matter how much we fuss, worry and compare with peers, we continue to doubt the answers. A simple way to get rid of ambiguity and anxiety is to use a growth chart – an old but little-used statistical tool. Growth charts are graphs that show the ideal weight and height of a child at a given age.
Growth charts are great diagnostic tools, as they not only let you monitor your child’s growth in normal conditions, they also make it easier to spot irregularities. The charts are like a “standard that every child should attain and if she is not doing so, we need to find the reasons”, says Sanjay Wazir, director of neonatology, Cloudnine Hospital. He cites the example of a baby whose growth curve started faltering from the age of one, despite adequate nutrition. It emerged that the child had celiac disease.
Over the past few decades, for a certain section of society, good nutrition has ceased to be a problem. Financial security has not only made sure that our plates are full, it has also caused a change in dietary patterns for many Indians. As a result, obesity and the huge burden of lifestyle diseases that tag along have become rampant, as IndiaSpend previously reported. We do not have options other than to use one of these charts, said Neelam Kler, chairperson, Department of Neonatology, Institute of Child Health, Sir Ganga Ram Hospital, New Delhi. Wazir concurred. “Given the limitation of ideal growth charts, the IAP charts are our best bet,” said Wazir.
Hence, the need for country-specific growth charts. Many paediatricians appear to agree with this view. In an unrelated study, Vijaylakshmi Bhatia, paediatric endocrinologist at Sanjay Gandhi Postgraduate Institute of Medical Sciences, Lucknow, advises against using WHO charts for five to 18-year-olds as they are derived from “a group of children who are ethnically taller and heavier than our own high socio-economic group children”.
Some paediatricians differ. The methodology used for the IAP charts is “not very robust”, said Kler, although it has the advantage of “recent data and accounts for change in growth pattern in a developing country with changing economic conditions”.
