Physical Growth among Differently Able and Normal Children – A Cross Sectional Study

Abstract

Early identification of lag in physical growth would help in the planning of some interventions to address the nutritional needs of differently abled children. The present study carried out with the objectives: (1) To compare the physical growth of differently abled children with that of normal children. (2) To compare the physical growth of differently abled and normal children with WHO growth standard. A cross-sectional study comprised of 346 children from deaf-dumb, blind children school and selected school of Belagavi. Pretested questionnaires were used to collect necessary information like anthropometric measurement and socio-demographic variables. SPSS 20 and WHO Anthro version 3.2.2 was used for analysis. Informed consent from guardian and assent from children was obtained prior to collecting data. We observed that, the mean height of differently abled children was 141.2 ± 9.84 and that of normal children was 143.6 ± 6.52, mean weight of differently abled children was 32.3 ± 5.12 and that of normal children was 38.8 ± 4.40, mean BMI of differently abled children was 16.4 ± 1.72 and that of normal children was 18.7 ± 1.75. A significant difference in all anthropometric variables between differently abled children and normal children was observed except in Hip circumference. WHO ‘Z’ score system showed more variation in differently abled children than normal children. The study revealed that there is more growth lag in differently abled children than normal children.

Keywords: Physical growth, differently able, children, Anthropometric measurements