The WHO Child Growth Standards 281
4
- Last but not least, the WHO Standards are an
important means of ensuring the right of all
children to be healthy and to achieve their full
growth potential; they provide sound scientif-
ic evidence that, on average, young children
everywhere experience similar growth pat-
terns when their health and nutritional needs
are met. For this reason the WHO Standards
can be used to assess compliance with the UN
Convention on the Rights of the Child, which
recognizes the duties and obligations to chil-
dren that cannot be met without attention to
normal human development
Conclusions
The WHO Child Growth Standards were derived
from children who were raised in environments
that minimized constraints on growth such as
poor diets and infection. In addition, their mothers
followed healthy practices such as breastfeeding
their children and not smoking during and after
pregnancy. The standards depict normal human
growth under optimal environmental conditions
and can be used to assess children everywhere, re-
gardless of ethnicity, socioeconomic status and
type of feeding. They also demonstrate that healthy
children from around the world who are raised in
healthy environments and follow recommended
feeding practices have strikingly similar patterns of
growth. The International Pediatric Association
has officially endorsed the use of the WHO Stan-
dards, describing them as ‘an effective tool for de-
tecting both undernutrition and obesity’ [21].
Early recognition of growth problems, such as
faltering growth and excessive weight gain rela-
tive to linear growth, should become standard
clinical practice by:- routine collection of accurate weight and
height measurements to permit monitoring of
childhood growth; - interpretation of anthropometric indices such
as height-for-age and BMI-for-age based on
the WHO Child Growth Standards, and - early intervention after changes to growth pat-
terns (e.g. upward or downward crossing of
percentiles) have been observed to provide
parents and caregivers with appropriate guid-
ance and support.
8 de Onis M, Onyango A, Borghi E, Siyam
A, Blössner M, Lutter CK; WHO Multi-
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DOI: 10.1159/000360352