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of chronic illnesses in children less than 16 years was 11 1 per thousand. Most of the
illness were due to disorden of the respiratory system (20.0%), nervous system
(14 0%) and musculoskeletal system (11.0%; Pless and Douglas,1971)
Out of the total DALY lost in school age, 97.0% is In the developing countries. lnd~a
and Sub-Saharan Africa share almost half the burden. lnfect~ons and parasltlc d~seases
are the leacling causes of DALY loss in developing countries. In Sub-Saharan Africa,
the DALY lost is 10 times higher than that in developed countries. Out of the total
DALY lost In school age children, 70.0% is attributable to communicable d~seases.
Other important conditions that contribute to DALY loss in developing countries are
lnfectlons and parasitic diseases including intestlnal helminths, tuberculos~s, malana,
vacclne preventable illness, Schistosomiasis, Chagas disease, acute lower respiratory
infection, chronic respiratory dlsease and d~arrheal dlseases (Bundy and Guyatt,1996)
Ib) Indian st-
(I) Growth
Growl I 1s a sens~tlve lndlcator of health Durlng school age there 1s an average welght
galn of 3 Okg-3 5 kglyear and he~ght galn of 5 Ocms-6 0 cmslyear There are two
growth spurts seen In thls stage, one around 6-8 years known as the preadolescent or
m~d growth spurt and the other IS the adolescent growth spurt that takes place between
12-17 years of age Though the growth standards developed by the Nat~onal Center
for Health Stat~stlcs USA (NCHS) are extensively used world over the data published
by Pqalwal and Agarwal (1992) prov~des a good reference for lnd~an studles
(Mukherjee 1997) It has been found that the growth of affluent lnd~an ch~ldren was
comparable to the~r western counterparts In the preadolescent and early adolescent