Two decades of nutrition assessment in the Eastern Mediterranean Region: scope, methodologies and dissemination

Different nutritional disorders prevail at different stages in the life cycle, e.g. growth retardation in the fetus, protein energy deficiency in children, noncommunicable conditions in adults. The scope of nutrition assessment has changed over the past 2 decades. The focus shifted from pregnant and lactating mothers and children, through functional consequences of malnutrition to deficiency disorders. Now the focus is on obesity. Clinical methods of assessment [usually indicators of late-stage malnutrition] have become less important recently although clinical indicators of iodine deficiency and vitamin A deficiency are still useful. The key method now is anthropomorphic measurement, such as weight-for-age or body mass index. All the countries of the Region have nutrition education programmes for dissemination of information and most have drawn up national dietary guidelines applying the strategies that were developed after the 1992 International Conference on Nutrition

Anthropometric measurements and plasma retinal levels of preschool children in Egypt

This study was designed to explore the relation of anthropometric measurements of preschool children and their plasma retinol levels. Weight, height and plasma retinol levels were measured in 1572 Egyptian preschool children aged 6.71 months from 5 governorates representing different geographical areas in Egypt. The preschool children were selected from the catchmnent areas of urban and rural primary health care [PHC] facilities in each governorate. Results showed that stunting [21.5%], underweight [16.4%] and wasting [9.6%] as indicators of protein energy malnutrition [PEM] were the major problems among preschool children. However, prevalence of overweight represented 1.7% of the total studied children. Among the severely low plasma retinol level children [< 10 micro g/dl], underweight was 33.3% while 16.6% among the normal plasma retinol level children [>20 micro g/dl]. Also, stunting among the former group was more than double [44.4%] that among the latter group [21.9%]. However, there is no significant association between nutritional status of children as indicated by weight/age Z-score [W/A], height/age Z-score [H/A], weight/height Z-score [W/H] and their plasma retinol levels. We can conclude that plasma retinol per se is not an accurate predicator for nutritional status of preschool children