Birth of a child is perhaps one of life’s most treasured moments for every parent. Protecting the child’s health and ensuring proper nutrition and growth are the only important goal for any parent. In July 2015, the Government of India, released malnutrition figures from the Rapid Survey on Children (RSoC) data that was collected in 2013-14. According to this report:
- 29.4% of children (aged less than three years) fall in underweight category (low in weight for their age),
- 15% were wasted (low weight for their height)
- 38.7% were stunted (low in height for age)
Introduction to Malnutrition
The Dorland Medical Dictionary defines Malnutrition or Malnourishment as a condition that results from unbalanced diet causing various health problems. This unbalanced diet results from eating a diet in which nutrients are either not enough or are too much. Simply put, malnutrition can be categorized as under-nutrition (Underweight) and over-nutrition (Obesity). Malnutrition is caused by various conditions or circumstances like:
- Poor Diet
- Food Shortages
- Food Prices and Irregular Food Distribution
- Lack of Breastfeeding
- Lack of monitoring vital parameters of child such as: age, height, weight and head circumference
Malnourishment at an early age leads to reduced physical and mental development of the child. Hence, the first two years of a child’s life are critical and is termed as “Window of Opportunity”. There are various parameters to identify malnutrition in a child, the most crucial being monitoring the vital parameters up to 12 years of age:
- Head circumference
- Height
- Weight
How iCHR is helping?
iCHR is the India’s 1st Hospital linked Integrated Child Health Record – a revolutionary concept of automated vaccination record and growth monitoring, for your precious child. Our goal with iCHR is to attain the sustainable development goals and reduce the child mortality rate. It helps in keeping track of all the vital parameters up to 12 years of age responsible for monitoring the growth of a child such as:
- Head circumference
- Height
- Weight
- BMI
The parameters are plotted on WHO based charts, which help the child’s pediatrician to analyze any risk of malnutrition, and the statistics can also be used by ICDS for future studies.
Case Study
Fortis Le Femme, being the major implementer of iCHR application gave insight on patients whose growth improved immensely with the utilization of the growth charts, namely:
- Fenton Growth Chart for Preterm Babies
- WHO Growth Chart for Term Babies
The chart below depicts the Weight versus Age vital parameters for a preterm baby on the Fenton Growth Chart which illustrates that growth of the baby at 46 weeks falls under 3 centile which is a bit on the lower side. With proper instructions and guidelines of the pediatrician, the growth of the child can be improved.
Fenton Chart – Weight versus Age
The chart below depicts the Weight versus Age vital parameters for a term baby on the WHO Growth Chart illustrating that growth of the baby from 2 months to 15 months of age falls below 3 centile which is on the lower side.
WHO Growth Chart – Weight versus Age
In both the above cases, with timely intervention and proper instructions of the pediatrician improved the growth of the child and helped the parents to come out of fear of retarded growth for their child.
We at iCHR are profound & proficient in providing the platform at your doorstep starting from installation, training the end users, support and maintenance of the application. We make sure that you do not fall in traps & make the best of decisions for the hospital and the patients. If this sounds interesting and you are still not on board, contact us to know more on ichr@oxyent.com or 011-40644232 for further queries and we’ll be more than happy to help!
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