Anthropometric growth in school children aged 9-15 years

ABSTRACT

Anthropometric measurements are presented for Dar es Salaam school children aged between 9-15 years. Girls are heavier than boys (P less than 0.001); and attain almost a plateau in standing height by 15 years age. In girls; sitting to standing height percent increase with age by about 0.2 percent years as compared to a 0.67 percent year decline in boys suggesting that; the increase in standing height with age in girls results from more trunk than leg height growth as compared to more leg than trunk height growth in boys. Boys have wider chest (P less than 0.001) than girls and become taller than girls after 14 years of age. Despite having similar onset of accelerated and trends of anthropometric growth about 60 percent of the subjects in this study have smaller standing height and weight than values reported in Caucasians of comparable age. It is recommended that further work is required to include children between 0-8 years of age also from rural areas so that comprehensive reference values could be constructed