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'Agbenu EKM, 1982: Anthropometric Assessment of the Nutritional Status of 5-Year Old Ghanaian Children at Chorkor in Accra. Anthropologie (Brno) 20, 3: 209-213'. |
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| Abstract | | An anthropometric assessment of nutritional status was conducted at Chorkor — a suburb of Accra which involved the anthropometric measurement of 376 children (169 females, 209 males) age-range between 6 months to 5 years were examined. Heights — weights with age variables including head, chest, neck and upper-midarm circumferences, the assessment of breastfeeding, the quality and the quantity of food intake were assessed.
The results confirm that Ghanaian babies do better nutritionally than European children during the first six months of their growth and development period. But Ghanaian babies contrarily suffer later on from environmental malnutrition and diseases which consequently retard their continued growth and development.
There were no great increases in head circumference (fig. 3) for both sexes. Boys had (6.19 cms) increases while the girls gained (7.78 cms) in the size of the head. From the years (0.5—05) the boys had continuous mean increases of (7.45 cms) in chest circumference (fig. 5) compared with the girls'mean total increase of (5.44 cms). Neck and upper-mid-arm-circumference measurements (figs. 4, 6) were relatively constant (Bayle N. 1956). This relative constancy of the two measurements points towards mild child malnutrition. This observation is again reinforced by the less protein-caloric (Tab. 3) intake by the infant-children in the Chorkor environment, where mostly fish and kenkey or banku are the staple food of children during the three-meal patterns.
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