Stunting and 'overweight' in the WHO Child Growth Standards - malnutrition among children in a poor area of China

Objective The arms of the present paper were to assess the nutritional status of children under 5 years old using the 2006 WHO Child Growth Standards (the WHO standards) and to compare the results with those obtained using the National Center for Health Statistics/WHO international growth reference ('the NCHS reference') Design This was a community-based cross-sectional survey The WHO standards were used to calculate Z-scores of height-for-age (HAZ), weight-for-age (WAZ) weight-for-height (WHZ) and BMI-for-age (BMIZ) Setting Fifty counties of thirteen mid-western provinces. China Subjects A total 8041 children aged <5 years were measured during a 2-month period from August to October 2006 Results The prevalence of stunting, underweight and wasting were 30.2%, 10.2% and 2.9%, respectively. The prevalence of overweight and the possible risk of overweight were as high as 4.1% and 16.8%. further analysis among the children with possible risk of overweight found that the percentage of stunting (HAZ < - 2) was 57.6%, the percentage with -2 <= HAZ <= 2 was 41.0% and the percentage with IIAZ>2 was only 1.4%. The prevalence of stunting was 21.9% and of underweight was 12.7% by the NCIIS reference. Conclusions Stunting was the most serious problem that was impeding child growth and development. The high rate of 'overweight' was a false impression, the truth being 'stunting overweight', and the way to solve it should be to increase protein and other nutrients in the diet at an early age