Sedentary lifestyle may lead to obesity epidemic in children: WHO

New Delhi, May 7: With the changing lifestyle India could face a major problem of increase in obese or overweight children, according to the World Health Organisation.

''The way people in urban areas are living, their dietary pattern has given to alarming increase in number of overweight and obese children. India can be affected by this epidemic,'' Dr Le Gales Camus, Assistant Director General WHO, Geneva, said here while giving details of the new WHO Child Growth Standards for infants and children upto five years of age.

However, Dr Camus refuted the recent newsreport in an Indian daily that charged that faulty WHO growth charts for infants advocated during the past 40 years had resulted in an entire generation of obsese children. The old WHO growth charts were calculated on the basis of data obtained from limited samples of infants fed on bottled milk in the US. The bottled milk fed infants put on weight easily than those fed on mothers milk so the latter were more often found to be underweight, the report had pointed out.

''The earlier growth chart was based on the tools available at that time. Now the new chart incorporates the data arrived on the basis of the best available science. We have worked towards improvement and the new growth chart is based on extensive data on breastfed babies so is improved one. Paediatricians and parents are being advised to monitor and assess growth and development of children during the first phase of their lives on the basis of these improved data,'' Dr Camus said.

The new WHO Child Growth Standards confirm that children born anywhere in the world and given the optimum start in life have the potential to develop to within the same range of height and weight.

Naturally there are individual differences among children, but across large populations regionally and globally, the average growth is remarkably similar. For example children from India, Norway and Brazil all show similar growth pattern when provided healthy growth conditions in early life.

The new standards prove that differences in children's growth to age five are more influences by nutrition, feeding practices, environment and healthcare than genetics or ethnicity. With the new standards parents, doctors, policymakers and child advocates will know when the nutrition and healthcare needs of children are not being met. Under nutrition, overweight and obesity and other growth related conditions can be detected and addressed at an early stage, she said.

For the first time the new growth standards were truly international and contained data from India also. About 8000 children from India, Brazil, Ghana, Norway, Oman and US participated in the Multicentre Growth Reference Study in the community based multicountry project. The WHO had initiated intensive study in 1997 to develop a new international standard for assessing the physical growth, nutritional status and motor development in all children from birth to age five.

Indian study was carried out by a team of Pediatricians from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences led by Dr Nita Bhandari. In India, the sample was drawn from 58 affluent neighbourhoods of South Delhi in which relatively large groups of affluent, educated people reside. All the children had at least one parent who had received 17 or more years of education, a key factor associated with unconstrained child growth in these settings, Dr Bhandari said.

The new standards are based on the breastfed child as the norm for growth and development in contrast to the earlier which ones which were based on both breastfed and aritificially fed children.

This brings coherence for the first time between the tools used to assess growth and national and international infant feeding guidelines which recommended breastfeeding as the optimal source of nutrition during infancy. This will now allow accurate assessment, measurement and evaluation of breastfeeding and complementary feeding.

The new standards avocates exclusive breast feeding upto six months of age and introduction of food supplments only after that period while as per the earlier standards exclusive breastfeeding was required only upto first four months after which it advocated use of food supplements.

The development for the first time the standardised Body Mass Index charts for infants upto five years is a major innovation in assessing healthy weights of children. Additionally the development of 'Windows of Achievement' for six key motor development milestones will provide a unique link between physical growth and motor development, they pointed out.

The new standards are now available globally and the countries could adopt them now.

UNI