Prevalence of Underweight of Children 0 to 5 Years Old (WHO Standard)

The World Health Organization (WHO) released the WHO-CGS in 2006 to replace the old reference previously developed by the US National Center for Health Statistics. Based on a study conducted by the NNC, the NNC Governing Board recognized that the WHO-CGS is a technically robust tool for measuring, evaluating, and monitoring the growth of young Filipino children and approved its adoption through Resolution No. 2008-2, issued on 27 June 2008. The adoption of the WHO-CGS as a tool for generating statistics on the nutritional status of children 0-5 years old was presented to and approved by the NSCB Executive Board in its 2nd quarter meeting on 1st June 2012. The standard deviation (SD and represented by the symbol s) shows how much variation or "dispersion" exists from the middle-most score. Z-score (or SD-score) = (observed value - median value of the reference population) / standard deviation value of reference population. The use of -2 Z-scores as a cut-off implies that 2.3% of the reference population will be classified as malnourished even if they are truly "healthy" individuals with no growth impairment.