Growth monitoring is widely accepted and strongly supported by health professionals, and is a standard component of community paediatric services throughout the world.
In this review, we define growth monitoring as the regular recording of a child's weight, coupled with some specified remedial actions if the weight is abnormal in some way. Although the causes of growth faltering and the responses to it may be region specific, the process is the same, and we consider here growth monitoring in both the deprived and richer populations of the world.Two studies were included, both conducted in developing countries. In one, the nutritional status at 30 months in 500 children showed no difference between those allocated to growth monitoring and those not. The other study examined whether counselling improved mothers' knowledge of the growth chart, and reported better test scores at four months.