Growth Monitoring is a screening tool to diagnose nutritional, chronic systemic and endocrine disease at an early stage. It has been suggested that growth monitoring has the potential for significant impact on mortality even in the absence of nutrition supplementation or education. Experience in Tamilnadu, Maharashtra and other states in India indicates that individual growth monitoring of children is both feasible and extremely useful. Rate of growth of children is one of the finest indicators of the health of a community. Growth monitoring followed by suitable action prevents illness, malnutrition and even death. It provides reassurance about child’s health and prevents parental anxiety. On community and national level it helps identify children at risk of morbidity and mortality. It thus helps in implementation of national programmes for nutritional and medical interventions like supplementary feeding, foods to vulnerable group, underprivileged school children, etc. It is also a method to evaluate programs for improving child health and nutrition and can form the basis for policy making.

Through growth monitoring mothers, family and community can be guided about the importance of nutrition in child growth and survival, ultimately resulting in better child rearing practices.

Monitoring the growth of a child requires taking the same measurements at regular intervals, approximately at the same time of the day, and seeing how they change. A single measurement only indicates the child’s size at that moment. Currently, the Government policies for growth monitoring focus on children less than 5 years of age. Growth monitoring is one of the basic activities of the under 5 clinics where the child is weighed periodically at monthly intervals during the 1st year, every 2 months during the 2nd year and every 3 months thereafter up to the age of 5 to 6 years. Growth monitoring is viewed in most programs as an activity for weighing children regularly and plotting weight on growth charts to identify undernutrition (mostly severe Protein Energy Malnutrition) for feeding programs or to provide data on nutritional status. There are no national policies for growth monitoring beyond the age of 6 years. Growth monitoring differs greatly among pediatricians and often is not based on evidence. Hence, the Indian Academy of Pediatrics has made these consensus guidelines for growth monitoring as per IAP Action Plan 2006.

Primary aims

To identify children with growth deviation i.e., undernutrition and over nutrition and to identify diseases and conditions that manifest through abnormal growth.

Secondary aims

To discuss health promotion related to feeding, hygiene, immunization and