The 2006 WHO child growth standards

doi:10.1136/bmj.39155.658843.BE

BMJ 2007;334:705-706 (7 April), doi:10.1136/bmj.39155.658843.BE

Editorials

The 2006 WHO child growth standards

Have implications for nutrition programmes in emergencies

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

In April 2006, the World Health Organization released its newWHO child growth standards,¹ 16 years after a WHO working groupon infant growth recommended that these standards should describehow children should grow rather than how they actually grow.²The basis for the new growth standards was six population basedstudies of infants and children from Ghana, India, Norway, Brazil,Oman, and North America, undertaken between 1997 and 2003. Participantswere fed according to accepted international nutritional standards(including breast feeding), and their mothers were adequatelynourished and avoided known adverse factors such as tobaccoexposure.

The new growth standards show that children born in differentregions of the world can and should grow equally well, and theyalso show that sex and ethnic origin are minor determinantsof growth compared with adequate nutrition, environment, andhealth.² However, as expected, important differences in thediagnosis of malnutrition emerge when . . . [Full text of this article]

Martin Bloem, chief of nutrition

World Food Program, Rome 00148, Italy

Martin.Bloem@wfp.org

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