Single occasion means of height and weight of Sri Lankan Tamil children from Jaffna

Little published material is available on physical growth in any Sri Lankan population. This paper reports attained mean heights and weights of middle class Tamil children from Jaffna, based on single occasion measurements of 358 boys and 517 girls ranging in age between 6 and 17 years. The cross-sectional height and weight data of both boys and girls show a typical pattern. Boys are taller and heavier up to 9 years, then girls lead in both the measurements due to their pubertal phase of rapid growth. Boys supersede them again when they enter into their rapid growth phase, i.e. in height at 13 years but their mean weights remain lower till 16 years. Thus at 17 years boys on average are 5 cm taller than girls. With reference to British standards the attained means of both boys' and girls' height remain around the 10th centile, but later shift to the 3rd centile. In weight, however, they remain below the 3rd centile and indeed much below the range during the later part of the pubertal phase. Apart from nutrition and living conditions, how much of this pattern is influenced by ethnic and tropical climatic factors is still unclear.