Growth Monitoring: Family Participation: Effective Community Development

Abstract

Growth monitoring was introduced into most developing countries in the 1970s with the aim of combating under nutrition in infancy and childhood. Ten years later analysis showed weight charts were not completed satisfactorily and not used in decision making. Although growth monitoring is now seldom mentioned in nutrition studies, the authors of this study are convinced of its value. With new technology using the direct recording scales (DRS), illiterate or semi-literate mothers are able to complete the growth curve on the weight chart and acquire understanding about the process and its significance for their infant. This study investigates the understanding of the growth curve by the rest of the family. The mother, their daughters and significantly, the grandmothers were shown to have comprehended the meaning of the growth curve. In families where mothers weighed their infant using the DRS, a smaller proportion were found to be suffering from periods of growth failure compared with families where the infant was weighed by community health workers with a dial scale. There are obvious gains if technologies are moved from the clinic into the family and the community. The weighing and charting of children by DRS may be a further step in the fight to overcome undernutrition in developing countries.