Knowledge Of Mothers On Growth Monitoring Charts And Nutritional Status Of Children (0-24 Months) In Akim Oda

Growth monitoring is one of the key strategies in promoting child health and reducing infant mortality. This task is one of the important activities undertaken at the Child Welfare Clinic. One of the reasons for growth monitoring is to educate mothers to have a clear understanding about the growth of their children and motivate them to take appropriate measures to maintain or improve it to prevent malnutrition. Through the provision of primary health care by trained health professionals it is generally appropriate and accepted for health professionals to explain the growth charts to mothers after taking and recording the weights of children in the growth charts during child welfare clinic sessions (Antwi, 2008). It is also expected that growth monitoring charts could be used as a teaching aid to make malnutrition apparent to both health workers and mothers however, in order to fulfill this objective; mothers must understand the charts clearly. Although health personnel do educate mothers during child welfare clinic sessions most mothers express some level of understanding to the growth charts. Maternal understanding of the growth chart is a major step in the attempt to solving childhood malnutrition since majority of care takers are mothers. Malnutrition, defined as nutritional deficiency, is a serious public health problem that has been linked to a substantial increase in the risk of mortality and morbidity (Antwi,2008). The WHO Growth Standards include anthropometric indicators like length/height for-age, weight-for-age, weight-for-length/height, BMI-for-age, head circumference-for-age, arm 1circumference-for-age, subscapular skinfold-for-age, and triceps skinfold-for-age. These standards serve as tools for detecting both under-nutrition and obesity. The standards go beyond the previous references and include indicators like Body Mass Index (BMI) and skinfolds. These standards are particularly useful in monitoring childhood malnutrition in various forms which is relevant to public health in both developed and developing countries (Nombe, 1992).