MONITORING GROWTH IN CHILDREN AGED UP TO 5 YEARS IN ISLAMSHAHR, REY AND QOM

This is a descriptive and analytic study of growth and nutrition indices in 1624 children under 5 years of age who received services from PHC centers (known as Health Houses) in Islamshahr, Qom and Rey catchment areas.We used data from family health files to construct standardized Z-scores for the following indices: weight for age, height for age, and weight for height; Analysis of data showed that: some 5.4 percent of children were underweight (1.6%, 4.4%, 6.6% in Islamshahr, Rey and Qome respectively).Overall, 24.4 percent were suffering from low height for age (stunting) (11.5%, 19.1%, 28.6% in Islamshahr, Rey and Qom respectively) and 4.45 percent of children had low weight for height (wasting) 6.3%, 2.2%, 5% in Islamshahr, Rey and Qom).There was a statistically significant relationship between low weight and: a) higher birth order (p= 0.009).b) the presence of frequent plateaus (0.003) and downslopes (p=0.01) on the child's growthchart (p=0.01). In Qom, there was also a significantly greater risk of low weight for children with longer nursing periods (p= 0.0005) and those who spent more time on exclusive breastfeeding (p= 0.005).