Nutrition during early life and period of rapid growth has profound influence on the health and well being of chi -id. Despite recognition of importance of maternal and child nutrition, it is usually the most neglected factor in community health and child care programs in our societies. The Korean Health Development Institute has been worked to study and develop low-cost health delivery system in rural areas for the future to use as models for nationwide health´ programmed in Korea. In this programmed, community nutritionists essentially to be involved to have an obvious and important role in guiding and improving the maternal and child nutrition to total health. In order to strengthen this integrated programme of community health with nutrition, a fundamental study through the nutrition survey is needed. , ;
The purpose of this, study was to determine the practices of infant feeding and weaning, food and nutrient intakes, nutritional behavior, anthropometric measurements and hematologic studies of pre-school children and their mothers in one of the three demonstration areas of KHDL A total of 121 children, ages from I to 6 years, and 87mothers, from Bukbang-ri and Whadong-ri of Hongchun-gun, Kangwon province, were surveyed, from February 21 to March 4 , 1979. The study revealed the following: 1 . Family environment
Average family size was 5.9 and over 61% of families had more than 6 family members. Approximately 65% of mothers were in the ages of 20 to 34. Nearly 79% of fathers and 92% of mothers received 6 years schooling or less. All households were engaged in farming.
2. Physical measurements
In comparing anthropornetric measurements´ with the Korean standards, 62% of children were shown above 50 percentile bight and 77.7% of them were above 50 percentile weight for age.- But 2.5% of children were lower than. 85% of arm circumference of Jellifes standards. Only-26.4% of mothers was above 50 percentile. height while 80.4% of them were above 50 percentile weight for age. 36.8% of mothers were below 90% arm circumference: From the above results, growth pattern of children were closer and somewhat superior whereas those anthropometric values of their mothers were remarkably inferior, respectively, compared with those of the Korean standards.
3. Weaning practices ?
80.2% of the children were breast-fed. The motives for combined feeding of breast milk with other substitutes during early life were mostly due -to the insufficient secretion of breast milk to feed the baby. 61.4% of children to be weaned between ages of 7 to 12 months. Only 10% of mothers completely terminated breast-feeding within 1 year, although others continued until the child was over 2 years old, or even 3, according to the arrival of the next child. The motives for weaning were various such as : baby wants to share new foods from family adult meals ; better nutrition ; pregnancy during lactation; lack of breast milk family or neighbors encourage to introduce the weaning foods. The weaning foods used most frequently at the onset of weaning was regular boiled rice. In the terminating method of breast-feeding, 43.3 %of mothers put antibiotics, aspirin or tincture of iodine over the breast nipple. 4. Maternal knowledge and attitude of nutrition. As many as 80% of mothers answered to question regarding the incidence of angular stomatitis as "the mouth has fever for making it bigger". Only 4.7% of mothers definitely knew about "five basic foods" and 7. 1% of them knew a little, and 88.2% were entirely ignorant. Over 89% of mother never beard of the Word "SHIKTAN" which means menu. Over 74% of mothers wanted to learn about family nutrition. These
results give evidence of sincere desire to learn about nutrition whereas their present nutrition knowledge is limited.
5. Food and nutrient intakes
In comparing with former studies, abundant consumption of grains and potatoes was characteristic in this area. Mean energy intakes of children were shown as 64.7 to 71.5% and that of mothers was 93.4%to the requirement or RDA. The intake of animal foods was not sufficient and protein intakes of children only met 49.7 to 68. 4%of the requirement and of mothers met 70.1% of the RDA. 16.8 to 23% of those protein intakes of children were derived from animal origin and that of mothers was 11.5%. These data thus present evidence of insufficient protein intake, qualitatively as well as quantitatively Intakes of iron, calcium and riboflavin were markedly low among the both groups of children and their mothers. 6. Hematologic values
The mean levels of hemoglobin, hematocrit and MCHC of children were, 11. 94g, 36. 75% and 32.49% and those of mothers were 12. 96g, 38. 55% and 33. 51%, respectively. A large portion of subjects are thus anemic, according to this survey.
According to the criterion of hemoglobin for anemia, 1 . 3: % of children and 15.74% of mothers could
be categorized as anemia.
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