MoPH holds workshops on WHO new growth charts

The Ministry of Public Health (MoPH) organised four training workshops on the new growth charts of the World Health Organisation (WHO) for public and private school students and community schools in Qatar aged 5-19 years. The workshops were held in collaboration with the Ministry of Education and Higher Education, the Primary Health Care Corporation and Hamad Medical Corporation.Dr Kholood Ateeq al-Mutawa, head, of non-communicable disease section at the MoPH, said that the adoption and implementation of the WHO new growth charts is an implementation of the National Nutrition and Physical Activity Action Plan 2017-2022, which aims to reduce the burden of obesity and chronic diseases and related diseases in Qatar such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes and some types of cancer.She said that the programme contributes to promoting health and non-communicable diseases, activating the Qatar National Vision 2030 for human development and promoting the health of the entire Qatari society to build a new healthy generation.She added that the programme represents an important step towards realising the right of every child to grow and enjoy good health based on scientific evidence from different countries of the world, pointing out that the main determinants of growth inequality have been environmental factors, which means that these charts can also be used to assess compliance with the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.Dr al-Mutawa noted that this programme has been applied to all public schools in starting from the academic year 2014-2015 and has been implemented in private schools and community schools in the 2015-2016 academic year, adding the aim of these programmes is to provide a database and build a monitoring system for the growth of students of private and government schools, boys and girls, in the three grades, as well as early detection of developmental disorders that may be related to nutrition.The workshops were attended by about 190 new nursing staff in schools and programme supervisors from the MoPH and the PHCC. A working team was formed and trained on how to use the new WHO growth forms to achieve the objectives of the programme.The analysis of the results of the new growth monitoring charts 2016, which included 165,000 students aged 5-19, showed that a large proportion of students are overweight and obese, especially among 10-14 year-old students. (QNA)