Self-monitoring child nutrition status through MCH Handbook. Dr. Hirotsugu Aiga, Chief ... of the MCH self-monitoring and self-learning tools for pregnant women ...
Issue 4: 16 Dec 2013
Technical Brief Project for Implementing Maternal and Child Health Handbook for Scaling-Up Nationwide
Self-monitoring child nutrition status through MCH Handbook Dr. Hirotsugu Aiga, Chief Adviser
Growth monitoring chart is in the MCH Handbook! The Maternal & Child Health Handbook (MCHHB) is one of the MCH self-monitoring and self-learning tools for pregnant women, mothers, children and family members. It is composed of several key monitoring topics. One of them is child malnutrition. The MCHHB includes the growth monitoring charts (i.e. for boys and for girls) developed and recommended by the National Institute of Nutrition (NIN). This issue of Technical Brief discusses child malnutrition in relation to self-monitoring of child nutrition status through the MCHHB.
Growth monitoring chart in the MCH Handbook version 2.0
Child malnutrition status in 4 pilot provinces
Of all the four Project’s pilot provinces, three provinces (Den Bien, Hoa Binh and Thanh Hoa) have higher malnutrition prevalence among children under 5 years of age, than national average. An Giang has the same level of child malnutrition prevalence as the national averages (Figure 1). Note that there is not only remaining undernutrition but also emerging over-nutrition in An Giang.
As shown in Figure 1, despite low acute malnutrition represented by consistently low prevalence of wasting (weightfor-height) across four provinces, higher chronic malnutrition (i.e. higher prevalence of stunting: height-for-age) was reported in 2010. The first step to address higher child malnutrition prevalence is, needless to say, mothers’ and care-givers’ clear recognition of malnutrition of their children. Growth monitoring chart is a powerful and well-visualized tool which helps them know whether their children are on track in their growth process, by plotting weight or height against a child’s age. The Project has been providing all the commune health centers with a weighing scale with height meter, to enable health workers to measure weight and height on a routine basis, when conducting child health check-ups. Health workers’ knowledge on the growth monitoring chart A total of 5,239 Health workers were trained on the use of the MCHHB by the Project, since 2011. They gained and deepened the knowledge on the growth monitoring chart: i.e. (i) how to measure weight and height/length; (ii) how to plot a data point on growth monitoring chart; (iii) how to interpret the location of each data point. A significant improvement (p
