Biomedical subjects
Publications and source records attributed to N Ethirajan.
Less than 10% salt contains the recommended levels of iodine. The lifting of the ban on the sale of non-iodized salt could put pregnant women and children in developing countries at risk.
We conducted a community intervention trial in 12 villages in Tamil Nadu, India to evaluate the benefits of growth monitoring. The villages were divided into 6 "growth-monitoring package" of intervention villages (GMP) and 6 "non-growth-monitoring package" of intervention villages (NGM). A functioning primary health care system was in place in all 12 villages implemented a set of interventions including health and nutritional education. About 550 children under the age of 60 months were studied over 4 years in GMP villages and a similar number of children in NGM villages. The interventions were identical in the two sets of villages except for the use of growth charts in education in the 6 GMP villages. The nutrition worker in the NGM villages had the same contact time as in the GMP villages but advised mothers without the benefit of growth charts. The research team, independently of the nutrition worker, did anthropometric studies on children in all villages every 4 to 5 months. Comparisons were done by calculating monthly gains in stature, and weight, and the significance of differences observed was adjusted for age and sex. After 30 months of interventions, similar improvements in growth were seen in GMP and NGM children. The interventions seemed to have improved the nutritional status of young children in both groups of villages. In view of the lack of additional benefit from growth monitoring over other educational interventions, we question its use as part of child survival programmes in India.
This paper presents a community-based problem-solving educational programme which aims at teaching medical and other health science students the importance of nutrition and its application. Through community surveys students assess the nutritional status of children under five using different anthropometric methods. They understand the cultural beliefs and customs related to food fads and the reasons for them. They also acquire the skill to educate the community using the information gathered. They use epidemiological methods such as case control study to find associations between malnutrition and other causative factors. Feedback from students has been positive and evaluation of students' knowledge before and after the programme has shown significant improvement.
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